Deleting a Unit

You delete a unit—either an array of disks, or a Single Disk—when you want to reconfigure the unit or use the drives for other purposes.

After you delete a unit, the drives appear in the list of Available Drives.


	Warning: When a unit is deleted, all of the data on that unit will be lost. The drives cannot be reassembled into the same unit because the data on it is erased. If you want to reassemble the drives into the same unit on another controller, use the Remove Unit button in 3DM2 instead of the Delete Unit button. Or, you can shut down the computer and physically move the drives (or the enclosure containing the drives) to another 3ware RAID controller. When you restart your system, the controller will recognize the unit. For more information see Moving a Unit from One Controller to Another.

If you have incomplete drives, or drives that appear with a message such as “Unsupported DCB,” indicating that they were previously part of a unit on a 3ware 7000/8000 series controller, they must be deleted before you use them. (If you want to move a unit from a 7/8000 controller to a 9750 controller, you must convert the drives first. For more information, see Moving a Unit from One Controller to Another.)

To delete a unit through 3DM2

1	Make sure the operating system is not accessing the unit you want to delete.

For example, make sure you are not copying files to the unit, and make sure that there are no applications with open files on that unit.

If you are not successful at deleting your unit, usually this is because there is currently I/O going to that unit, a message informs you that the unit is busy. In that case, you should stop any I/O first.

2	Backup any data you want to keep.

3	Unmount the unit.

Make sure the unit is not mounted and not in use. You should follow the specific operating system guide on how to unmount the volume before you delete a unit.

This step is very important. If a unit is not unmounted and you delete it, it is the equivalent of physically yanking a hard drive out from under the operating system. You could lose data, the system could hang, or the controller could reset.

Under FreeBSD, you can unmount the unit with this command: umount <mount location>

Under Linux, you can unmount the unit with this command:
umount <mount location>

Under Mac OS, launch the Macintosh Disk Utility, select the unit, and click the Unmount button on the toolbar, or select the icon for the unit on the desktop and drag it to the trash.

Under OpenSolaris, please consult your system documentation and the LSI KnowledgeBase for more information.

Under VMware, please consult your system documentation and the LSI KnowledgeBase for more information.

Under Windows, go to Start >> Administrative Tools >> Computer Management, and select Disk Management. Remove the logical drive letter for the unit. (under Windows it is not necessary to unmount the device before deleting the unit, because the API code correctly does this for you.)

4	In 3DM2, choose Management >> Maintenance.

5	In the Unit Maintenance section of the Maintenance page, select the unit you want to remove and click Delete Unit (Figure: Show Deleting a Unit Through 3DM2).

Show Deleting a Unit Through 3DM2

6	When a message asks you to confirm, click OK.

Configuration information associating the drives with the unit is deleted, and the individual drives appear in the Available Drives list. You can now use them as part of another unit, or designate them as Spares, for use in a rebuild.

Show Unit Successfully Deleted through 3DM2