Oracle 6140 Copyback doesnt start automatically

Again this week we had a disk fail in one of our ageing 6140 arrays. no big deal, but once I’d pulled the failed disk, waited around for a few mins, and replaced the disk with a new one copybook didn’t start of its own accord. I’ve seen this a number of times before, but not for a year or so now.
It pretty much does it if the disk fails with:

Event Message: Drive by-passed
Component type: Drive

It can sometimes also declare the disk Missing. Here’s how to breath some life into the process. Ok, before we start, this will only work when the array is on 07.xx firmware.

You will have a disk looking something like this:

Replaced Drive - No copyback
Replaced Drive – No copyback

First click on the volume group(VG) in the logical tab that the disk belongs to.

Now right click the volume group name and click on replace drives.

Replace drives
Replace drives….

It will now bring up a new window and in here you will see the missing disk mentioned in the top panel and in the bottom panel it should list the hot spare(HS) that is in-use (if you had any) and any unassigned disk that might be in the array.

Select drives to replace
Select drives to replace

Your disk you replaced should show here as an unassigned disk so click on it in the bottom panel and ‘replace drive’ will now become available, click it and the copyback will now happen.

If you did not want to have the copyback happen and would like to keep the HS as part of the VG you would click on that, it would then flip the disk from a ‘in-use hot spare’ to a member of the VG but you would now be one HS less unless you made the other disk the HS.

Once you make your disk selection, copyback should begin.

Copyback Begins
Copyback Begins

Pretty simple, but perhaps not obvious, I certainly can’t remember it first time every time, so in some ways, this post is for me.

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