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Difficulty: MediumStorage Drives and RAID Array Issues

A system technician receives a S.M.A.R.T. warning alert indicating a high number of reallocated sectors on one of the drives in a server's active storage array, though the array volume status still shows as healthy. Which of the following is the most appropriate immediate action for the technician to take?

  1. Preemptively hot-swap the failing drive with a healthy spare and rebuild the array structure.Answer
  2. B
    Perform a low-level format on the degraded drive to clear the reallocated sector table.
  3. C
    Break the storage array configuration and convert it to RAID 0 to isolate the bad sectors.
  4. D
    Wait for the storage controller to mark the drive as failed before taking diagnostic action.

Answer

Preemptively hot-swap the failing drive with a healthy spare and rebuild the array structure.
When S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics report increasing reallocated sectors, physical hardware breakdown is imminent. Preemptively swapping the degrading drive and rebuilding the array ensures data availability without risking an ungraceful volume crash.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the S.M.A.R.T. alert telemetry.
Identify that bad sectors are increasing, indicating imminent physical drive failure.
S.M.A.R.T. predictive warnings signal hardware degradation before complete drive offline failure occurs.
2
Prepare replacement media and execute drive replacement.
Remove the degrading disk cleanly while maintaining parity/mirror protection.
Replacing the disk before full failure reduces stress on the remaining array drives.
3
Initiate and verify array rebuilding.
Array parity or mirror synchronization restores complete fault tolerance.
The array returns to an uncompromised status once the rebuild operation completes.

Key Concept

S.M.A.R.T. Monitoring and Proactive RAID Maintenance
Estimated Time:1m 15s
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Topics

Storage Drives and RAID Array Issues

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