How to Mark a Drive as Spare in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC)

Unable to find instructions on how to mark a drive as spare using Intel® VROC.

The process of configuring a drive to become a spare drive varies depending from where the configuration is done:

• Intel® VROC GUI (Windows*)

1. Start the Intel® VROC GUI application (run as administrator).
2. In the Devices pane that displays the drives, select the drive to be marked as spare.
3. In the Disk Properties pane, click Mark as Spare.

• mdadm utility (Linux*)

1. Run the following command to add a spare drive to the designated container (/dev/md/imsm0): # mdadm --add /dev/md/imsm0 /dev/<nvmeXn1>
   • In Linux*, the spare drive is configured by default as a local spare drive. This means, it will act as a spare drive only for the container it was configured for. It is possible however, to configure the spare drive to work as a global spare drive instead. For details about this configuration, refer to How to Configure a "Global" Spare Drive in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) for Linux*.

• UEFI HII:

1. Enter the setup and configuration mode of the BIOS.
2. Navigate to EDKII Toolkit and press the Enter key.
3. Navigate to Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU and press the Enter key. Alternate destinations may be Intel® VROC SATA Controller or Intel VROC sSATA Controller. The non-RAID disks will be listed below the RAID volume in a category below. 
4. Highlight the desired target drive and press the Enter key. This screen presents the physical disk information page, and depending on the nature of the RAID array, there may be two options available: Mark as Spare and Mark as Journal.
5. Highlight Mark as Spare and press the Enter key.
6. Select Confirm.

Marking a disk as spare will remove all data on the disk. Make sure to back up any data before marking the disk as spare. The spare drive will remain powered in idle state at all times until it is required.

Additional considerations are explained in the User Guides for Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC).