Hello Yes, if the controller supports offlining then it is best to offline the drive rather than just pulling it out. The rebuild should start automatically if you have a hot spare. If you want to retain your slot assignments then you could unassign the hot spare, remove the hot spare, offline the predictive failure drive, physically remove the pred fail drive, and then insert the hot spare into that slot. A rebuild should initiate automatically, assign it as a hot spare if it doesn't. This would allow you to keep the drive/slot assignments the same as they currently are. The new drive can be put into the hot spare slot and assigned as hot spare. Our new controllers have the copyback feature to retain slot assignment. [URL] Thanks
My company has 1 remaining Dell 2850 (Server 2003) that will be taken offline in a couple of weeks after the new server is completed. The problem is, we have a drive with a Failure Predicted - Yes on a PERC 4e/Di. It is a RAID 5 with 5 disks (1 Disk is Global Hot Spare) and we do have Dell Open Manage Server Administrator installed.  So, it's been way to long since I've have done this and can't quite remember the process. Is this the correct process for correcting this issue: Take the Failing drive Disk 0:1 Offline which, should make the Hot Spare Disk 0:0 come online and automatically start the rebuild. It's tough getting old...  
PowerEdge 2850 perc 4e/di failed drive