Re: Procedure for replacing hdisk0

Johann Kappacher wrote:
Michael W. Ryder wrote:
Our RS6000 is saying that hdisk0 is failing and I have already scheduled with IBM Service to replace the drive. It has been too many years since I last had to replace the boot drive. I know that I have to have backups of the non-root directories and a mksysb tape.
What I don't remember is what needs to be done to remove the drive properly from the system and add the new one prior to restoring everything. The drive has two volume groups on it: rootvg and datavg. datavg is also on hdisk1.
Does anyone know of a good website with instructions for the procedure?
Hi,

wait a moment: Is hdisk0 the only disk in rootvg?
Try a "lspv".
If hdisk0 is the only rootvg disk, then you must do a mksysb to tape,
halt the machine, replace the disk, restore mksysb from tape to the new disk.

If the disk hdisk0 is only alerting a "predictive error" and all blocks are readable, you can migrate the system disk hdisk0 to the new disk
on the fly (if the new disk is hot-pluggable).

--jk

I managed to do a successful replacement of the hard disk yesterday. Rootvg included a number of data directories as it was the only hard drive in the computer for a while. What I ended up doing was backing up the data directories then unmounting them and doing a mksysb. Once the drive was replaced I restored the mksysb. I then had to remove the logical volumes for the data and then using SMIT add them back in and set up the file systems. Finally I replaced the data directories from the backup tape and everything was fine.
It took a bit longer than I expected as I forgot the order to do a couple of the steps and had to redo them. I didn't do a mksysb of the entire rootvg as it would not fit on a single 8mm tape and I had already backed up the data in a separate backup.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: AIX 4.3.3 Disaster Recovery
    ... On reasonably new hardware restoring from mksysb ... Another option would be to mirror rootvg and break the mirrors. ... then be able to access the rootvg on the "other" disk on a second machine. ... > restore the data from tape. ...
    (comp.unix.aix)
  • Re: rootvg not on hdisk0 but on hdisk4
    ... > 6) During the reboot after the mksysb restore, plug your external disk bay ... that hdisk4/5 replaced a rootvg of 4 smaller/slower/older disks hdisk0-3. ... server is up and running. ...
    (comp.unix.aix)
  • Re: AIX System and Application maintenance methodology
    ... Take one of the mirror copy disk drives physically out of the ... Make rootvg unmirrored, and remove the disk that is sitting on ... This method also avoids your application issues with mksysb, ...
    (AIX-L)
  • Re: Rootvg backup / restore
    ... Use mksysb for your rootvg, ... If you have a failure of a rootvg disk then once the disk has been replaced ... AIX FAQ at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/aix-faq/ ...
    (AIX-L)
  • Re: Re-mirroring rootvg
    ... that we're sure all is well, we need to re-mirror rootvg again. ... I use the following commands if both disk have the same size and the ... Mirror rootvg using mirrorvg or mklvcopy. ...
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