HP StorageWorks 2000 Series Reference Manual page 83

This section describes how to designate available drives as spares for use by any
virtual disk. It also describes how to return spares to the pool of available drives.
You can designate a maximum of eight global spares for the system. If a disk in any
redundant virtual disk (RAID 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, and 50) fails, a global spare is
automatically used to reconstruct the virtual disk. At least one virtual disk must
exist before you can add a global spare. A spare must have sufficient capacity to
replace the smallest drive in an existing virtual disk.
The virtual disk remains in Critical status until the parity or mirror data is
completely written to the spare, at which time the virtual disk returns to Fault
Tolerant status. For RAID 50 virtual disks, if more than one sub-vdisk becomes
critical, reconstruction and use of spares occur in the order sub-vdisks are
numbered.
To add global spares:
1. Select Manage > Virtual Disk Config > Global Spare Menu > Add Global Spares.
2. Select drives to designate as global spares.
Only appropriate drives are selectable.
3. Click Add Global Spares.
When processing is complete, the drive's icon changes to gray with a "G" in the
enclosure view.
You can delete global spares at any time. To delete global spares:
1. Select Manage > Virtual Disk Config > Global Spare Menu > Delete Global Spares.
2. Select the global spares to delete.
Only global spares are selectable.
3. Click Delete Global Spares.
When processing is complete, enclosure view shows the drives as available.