u/azone19

Hi everyone,

I have an HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 with a hard drive showing a predictive failure. I want to replace it with another compatible used drive, but I don't have an extra caddy/tray.

Can I remove the failing drive, unscrew it from its HP Smart Carrier/caddy, install the replacement drive in the same caddy, and then put it back into the server?

My main concern is the time the drive slot will remain empty while I remove the 4 screws and mount the replacement drive. Could those few minutes affect the running server, VMs, or RAID rebuild?

The array is RAID 1 / RAID 1+0, and the server is currently running.

Thanks for any advice or experience with this.