Load Source Replacement

Got a situation at my former employer. They closed the doors over a year
ago, but kept the System i (Model 520 on V5R4) at their BP's office. I
still have access to the machine so a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the
system was sending messages that one of the disk drives (RAID5) had gone
south. Obviously the BP wasn't checking the system so I notified them.



The defunct unit was the load source drive. The guy at the BP, who
eventually started working on it, told me that he went through steps to do a
Save 21, replace the drive, and a whole lot of other steps, including
restoring from the backup and then installing the PTFs (which ones he didn't
say).



All of which, I thought, was overkill. Even though it was the load source
drive, couldn't the bad disk unit have simply been de-activated, replaced,
and re-activated? We have several disks go back on the two systems, and I
have a vague recollection (senility may be rearing its ugly head here) that
we once lost the load source and IBM just went through the replacement while
the warehouse kept pulling orders.



Even if the load source is special in this regard, couldn't the BP simply
have re-installed the system from the Save 21 tape? Never had to do it, but
I thought that's what it was for.



Jerry C. Adams

IBM i Programmer/Analyst

In fact, I even kept voting for him after he died, because I'd rather vote
for a dead man with class than two live bums. -Bill Veeck on Norman Thomas

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A&K Wholesale

Murfreesboro, TN

615-867-5070