I have a Dell Poweredge R310 w/ a PERC S100 RAID controller, and want to replace & add HDDs. The R310 backplane itself clearly supports hot-swapping, but I can't figure out if the PERC S100 supports it. I would assume so, but looking over the manual for the PERC S100/S300, it's a little unclear whether the PERC S100 supports how-swapping.
There's a section on page 25 that says this (emphasis mine):
CAUTION: A physical disk can be hot-swapped from a system only if the system has a PERC S300 adapter and a backplane that supports hot-swapping.
At first, this sounds clear that it's only for the S300. But I can't tell if it was in a generic context, and the important piece was the "backplane that supports hot-swapping" piece.
Why would the PERC S300 support hot-swapping, but not the S100?
Does anyone have a server w/ an S100 controller and confirm whether it supports hot-swapping?
Otherwise, what are the risks of attempting to hot-swap a single HD with a higher capacity drive, if it doesn't support hot-swapping? Are we talking risk of data loss, or just system shutdown?
Best Answer
I called Dell, and the person I got on the phone couldn't get a definitive answer. Some were telling him the S100 didn't support hot-swapping, but they were basing this off forums from the internet, which even he was skeptical of.
After finally digging up my service tag, he was able to put me through to a technician, who then said the S100 definitely supports hot-swapping. Basically, his explanation was that it was the backplane that determined hot-swappability, not the RAID controller.
However, after all that, we both realized the backplane of my server -- the Poweredge S310 -- did not support hot-swapping.