How to know which drive to pull?

[thefiend]

Hello,

I just started working at a datacenter and I have a newbie question about replacing and removing the right hard drive. Sometimes a customer or colleague will specify a certain drive that needs to be removed or replaced (i.e. D:,E: or /dev/sdb). What is the best way to locate which sata port the drive in question is attached too?

This has confused me because often times a customer will have multiple hard drives with the same specs. For example 3 x 500GB Sata drives that all display the same exact model number (WD-XX500XXXXetc) in the OS.

In Linux I have found that the hdparm command can reveal the unique serial number of a drive. This is what I have been using for Linux HDD swaps. Is this the best way to do this?

In Windows, how can I know which sata port Drive E: is connected to? For example if Drive D:, E:, and F: are all 500GB Sata drives with the same model number? I always assumed disk 0, disk 1 etc. in disk management were associated with SATA0, SATA1. However, I just realized this is not the case.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you,

thefiend

[davidson]

It is dependent on the motherboard as well. What kind of motherboard are you using?

[Schumie]

thefiend - this will vary server to server, vendor to vendor.

You should be able to see the ID's on the motherboard and trace the cables. Remember to look at the disk manager under windows as the letters of drives may not necessarily be in the order of the physical drives.

If in doubt – always consult with one of your colleagues; remember, asking a stupid question is not stuipid, pulling a drive and potentially destroying data or causing an outage is!

[thefiend]

I am inquiring more about the OS view than looking at the motherboard. I can determine which drive is attached to a given sata port by following the cable, but that doesn't necessarily tell me which Drive letter the drive is associated with. There are a ton of different motherboards that we use at the datacenter.

In disk manager specifically, what should I be looking at to tell me which drive to pull? If a customer asks to remove the E: Drive, how does that translate to a physical SATA port? I was also unable to locate the unique serial number of the drive in windows without having to use an outside utility such as HWInfo. I guess my question is:

What is the most efficient way to determine the physical sata port location and/or unique serial number of a hard drive when only the drive letter or mount point is referenced?

I just wish there was a right click option to see "E: drive connected to SATA2"

Thanks for the replies!

~ thefiend

[uday1583]

True hard drive with same capacity and model have same model number, but you can differentiate them through serial number, well I guess you have a software already to reveal the different serial number of your HDD or you can just manually look at it the HDD.

[ABMX]

Hello,

I just started working at a datacenter and I have a newbie question about replacing and removing the right hard drive. Sometimes a customer or colleague will specify a certain drive that needs to be removed or replaced (i.e. D:,E: or /dev/sdb). What is the best way to locate which sata port the drive in question is attached too?

This has confused me because often times a customer will have multiple hard drives with the same specs. For example 3 x 500GB Sata drives that all display the same exact model number (WD-XX500XXXXetc) in the OS.

In Linux I have found that the hdparm command can reveal the unique serial number of a drive. This is what I have been using for Linux HDD swaps. Is this the best way to do this?

In Windows, how can I know which sata port Drive E: is connected to? For example if Drive D:, E:, and F: are all 500GB Sata drives with the same model number? I always assumed disk 0, disk 1 etc. in disk management were associated with SATA0, SATA1. However, I just realized this is not the case.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you,

thefiend

Just to cover all bases, if you or your customer is working with a HW RAID controller like a 3Ware card or LSI(who now owns 3Ware) you'd be able to use their utilities to blink the activity light in the unit(assuming server was assembled for it properly) and figure out which HD. This works with both Linux and Windows. I don't recall being able to do the hdparm method when using a RAID Controller.

[Andrew22]

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