"Priebe, Jason" writes:

This is a really stupid question, but I can't find any answers to it in the documentation. We are going to replace the 4GB drives in our F210's shelf with 9GB drives by manually failing the 4GB disks one at a time.

What concerns me is that the documentation mentions that failing a disk _permanently_ marks it as failed, so that it cannot be used in another filer. Am I totally naive, or is there some way that you can permanently mark a disk so that even if you reformat it, a filer still knows that the disk is failed?

I did a similar thing a while ago to `migrate' disks in a volume to a different physical tray (I wanted to decommission a tray on an F330 to redeploy).

To get the `failed' disks recognised by the filer again all I did was use the appropriate command on the boot floppies to zero the disk. I can't recall exactly, but I believe it's `disk_erase_label'. That command is available in the `rc_toggle_basic' mode of the filer. Make sure you use it on the right disk!

NOTE: if you toast your data I ain't responsible!

I don't intend to try to use the disks in another filer, but I am worried about rendering seven 4GB disks unusable with any SCSI system. Will I be able to use these disks with SCSI-equipped PCs?

Yes, you should be able to. The `failed' state is just a flag in the label.