multiple drives in one sl Proliant P400 RAID controller, can it swap disks?

[i_am_kingjonny]

Hey guys,

First time posting, and though I'm not a complete novice, I will need a little teasing into the technical descriptions which will no doubt follow.

 

A short history...

I bought a second hand HP ProLiant ML370 G5 server a couple of years back (£300! Bargain!) to use as an audio (DAW) workstation. I'm running Win10 Pro. It's absolutely great for processing (less so for gaming, sadly) and I haven't got a problem running it. What I am struggling with understanding however are the RAID controllers (P800+P400) and how they actually work. Aside from the fact it wants me to update the firmware, that's another issue.

 

So here's my question:

I want to be able to remove drives from the machine after I've finished working on the material they contain and the music is published, to then store them wherever I feel like and replace them with a fresh drive ready for the next project. All fine, until it comes to plugging them back in again. As far as I can tell, to have Windows recognise the storage space it must first be allocated as a logical volume by the controller. But once the disk is removed and replaced (and another logical volume created), the controller seems to forget that the disk ever existed and though it does acknowledge the disk in the controller set-up, to actually allocate it as a logical volume again will destroy the data on the disk (or probably more accurately the allocation system no-longer acknowledges the data as present, I'm not sure). I guess this is because the array controller actually dictates where the data is kept while Windows is simply given a virtual version (which it reports as SSD)

So, is there a way to have windows control the P4/800 directly and store the knowledge required to re-access them? Or, is there a feature of the P4/800 that I'm missing when it comes to changing drives? The bays (8x 2.5" vertical caddy array) are hot swappable, so in a perfect world I'd like to be able to use them much in the way one would a USB flash stick (software eject -> physical removal). Internet searches over about a year of generally trying to figure out what the hell people are babbling on about has left me no wiser, maybe I'm asking the wrong question. So, I figured where else to find a bunch of enthusiastic guys who could translate my query into an answer one way or the other. Right now I have about 2 disks left before I will need more space but ideally I'd like to allocate specific artists/projects to specific disks so really I need a fresh disk about now.

 

NB, I realise HDDs do need to be spun up now and then during storage to help prevent degradation, but I'm not willing or even able to invest thousands of moneys into buying a secondary NAS array to start new projects.

 

Your help will be much appreciated, thank you!

 

Jon

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can't really do that with a raid card. Id get something like a usb hdd dock if you want to do that. Or a exteranl hdd.

[i_am_kingjonny]

Thanks for replying mate!

No chance at all then?

I was looking at USB enclosures but the ports are USB 2, so not fast enough to play 60GB odd of raw audio data across the line.in real time. Obviously with 2x 8 drive arrays I can allocate plenty of room for on-going projects, but then the transferring onto archived disks will end up being a very laborious process. Will keep a-thinking!

[Electronics Wizardy]

13 minutes ago, i_am_kingjonny said:

Thanks for replying mate!

No chance at all then?

I was looking at USB enclosures but the ports are USB 2, so not fast enough to play 60GB odd of raw audio data across the line.in real time. Obviously with 2x 8 drive arrays I can allocate plenty of room for on-going projects, but then the transferring onto archived disks will end up being a very laborious process. Will keep a-thinking!

Due to how the raid card work with drives, you can't read it directly. You can get a usb 3 card for the dock to make it faster if you want.

[i_am_kingjonny]

USB 3 card look like it's probably going to be the best long term option, and definitely a lot cheaper than a NAS system!

The slots are 8x size at 4x bus speeds, that should be good for top rate transfer, right?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, i_am_kingjonny said:

USB 3 card look like it's probably going to be the best long term option, and definitely a lot cheaper than a NAS system!

The slots are 8x size at 4x bus speeds, that should be good for top rate transfer, right?

yep you wont have any bandwidth issues

[i_am_kingjonny]

Thanks for your help buddy, be well!