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I have a failing drive on my ESXi 4 host and I'm going to replace it. There is no fault tolerance (RAID), each drive on its own. I'm planning do offline dding old drive to new one but I'm not sure this will work. Will ESXi properly recognize the cloned new drive or will fail because drive's serial number/model going to changed? What is the correct way to do it?

Hazard
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    The bigger question is if `dd` will even succeed if the drive's failing. You're better off just restoring from backups. – Nathan C Oct 30 '14 at 13:31
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    Well, the correct way to do it is with RAID, on a modern version of ESXi. [ESX4 went EoL last year](http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2039567). – HopelessN00b Oct 30 '14 at 13:37
  • @NathanC There probably aren't any backups. – ewwhite Oct 30 '14 at 13:38
  • So each disk is it's own datastore? if so can't you just Storage-vMotion the VMs off the failing disk onto good ones, replace the disk, rebuild the datastore and move them back? – Chopper3 Oct 30 '14 at 13:38
  • Let's assume that `dd` will success. ESXi 4 general support ended 5 months ago, not last year; it will fully EOL'd at 2016, also ESX != ESXi. I also have backups but they are not at VMDK level. I'm fully aware that is not a "best practice" scenario, I'm just trying to utilize what I have. Thanks for all these comments. – Hazard Oct 30 '14 at 18:01

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