Removing A Drive Blank; Installing A Drive Blank; Removing A Hot-Plug Hard Drive - Dell PowerEdge 2970 Hardware Owner's Manual

NOTE:
All installed drives must be either SAS or SATA. Mixed drive configurations are not supported.
NOTE:
It is recommended that you use only drives that have been tested and approved for use with the SAS/SATA
backplane board.
You may need to use different programs than those provided with the operating system to partition and
format SAS or SATA hard drives.
NOTICE:
Do not turn off or reboot your system while the drive is being formatted. Doing so can cause a drive
failure.
When you format a hard drive, allow enough time for the formatting to be completed. Be aware that
high-capacity hard drives can take a number of hours to format.

Removing a Drive Blank

NOTICE:
To maintain proper system cooling, all empty hard-drive bays must have drive blanks installed. If you
remove a hard-drive carrier from the system and do not reinstall it, you must replace the carrier with a drive blank.
Remove the drive blank as you would the 2.5-inch hard drive carrier:
1 Remove the front bezel, if attached. See "Removing the Front Bezel" on page 54.
2 Open the drive blank release handle to release the blank. See Figure 3-5.
3 Slide the drive blank out until it is free of the drive bay.

Installing a Drive Blank

Install the hard drive blank as you would a 2.5-inch hard drive carrier:
1 Remove the front bezel, if attached. See "Removing the Front Bezel" on page 54.
2 Open the handle on the drive blank.
3 Insert the drive blank into the drive bay until the blank is fully seated.
4 Close the handle to lock the blank in place.
5 Replace the front bezel, if it was removed in step 1.

Removing a Hot-Plug Hard Drive

1 Remove the front bezel, if attached. See "Removing the Front Bezel" on page 54.
2 From the RAID management software, prepare the drive for removal and wait until the hard-drive
indicators on the drive carrier signal that the drive can be removed safely. See your SAS RAID
controller documentation for information about hot-plug drive removal.
If the drive has been online, the green activity/fault indicator will flash as the drive is powered down.
When both drive indicators are off, the drive is ready for removal.
3 Open the drive carrier release handle to release the drive. See Figure 3-5.
4 Slide the hard drive out until it is free of the drive bay.
Installing System Components
57