Subscriber Discussion

Shipping Storage Servers... HDD In Or Out?

Avatar
Mike Dotson
Feb 20, 2015
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

Folks,

We are having internal discussions on how to ship our storage servers and hard drives and I would like to ask opinions outside of our own.

A system that has known RAID requirements is pre-initialized before shipping. All drives are marked.

The choice is either shipping the server with all the HDD installed in place.... or shipping the server with the drives removed.

For the case of shipping installed...at the receiving end we highly recommend that all the HDD be reseated because we do see from time to time that a drive has worked itself loose enough to be an issue.

This takes only a couple of minutes to do on each system.

For the case of shipping with the HDD removed...the end user must match the drive to its documented position...so this takes a lot longer to repopulate the system(s).

So, feel free to chime in with your own opinions and exeriences on this subject.

Avatar
Carl Lindgren
Feb 21, 2015

I think best practice is HDD out. If the packaging gets jostled around, dropped, etc. the weight of the HDD's can damage sleds, connectors, etc. That would be especially true if the storage uses 3-1/2" HDDs.

I recommend labeling the HDD's for what slot they occupy if the storage has been set up prior to shipment so that at the end, the drives are inserted in their proper positions before powering the device up.

(1)
New discussion

Ask questions and get answers to your physical security questions from IPVM team members and fellow subscribers.

Newest discussions