topic Re: Adding to arrays in Windows 2000? in Disk Enclosures

Adding to arrays in Windows 2000?

CadburyPlano — Mon, 31 Mar 2003 20:33:07 GMT

This may be a mere lack of knowledge on my end, but I'll ask anyway. Last weekend (3 days ago as of this writing), I added one physical hard drive each to two DL580 servers. Three of the four bays were occupied prior to doing this, and thus when I downed the server and launched SmartStart I was able to choose the option "Expand Raid 5 Array". Since Windows 2000 doesn't support scabbing disk space onto an existing partition, I chose to create a new partition.

When I booted the servers back up, it of course told me that it was initializing the new array config and that performance would improve when it was complete. I logged in to see if the partition was available in Disk Management. To no great surprise, I couldn't see it. I figured that in order for it to become visible, the build-out had to complete.

Well, that was Friday and this is Monday... I still don't see any available space to create a new logical drive in Disk Management. I don't even know how to be sure that the array is done doing whatever it has to do. This isn't a server I can just take down without a lot of coordination so hopefully I'm just missing a small and stupid detail on my part.

Any help, please? Thanks in advance!

Re: Adding to arrays in Windows 2000?

Terry Hutchings — Tue, 01 Apr 2003 14:01:10 GMT

Did you do anything with the logical drive (ie. new or extend)?

It may be too late now, but I would recommend looking at EM000915_CW01 (search for this on the support site).

Re: Adding to arrays in Windows 2000?

CadburyPlano — Tue, 01 Apr 2003 14:58:00 GMT

I'm not sure what you mean by "doing something" with the logical drives. I simply took the servers down, booted to SmartStart CD, ran the Array Config utility, chose to expand the existing Raid 5 array, then chose to make the new space into a new partition (because I would lose data if I tried expanding the existing partition due to Win2k limitations), and then I saved the config and restarted back to the Win2k server for each.

Also, thanks for the mention of the advisory, but I took a look and it definitely doesn't apply to my situation. Disk0 (the only partition other than the CD that shows up) is non-dynamic and I don't have anything in Disk Management labelled as "foreign". In fact, from that screen, it looks like I never added anything at all!

I've attached a screenshot.

Re: Adding to arrays in Windows 2000?

CadburyPlano — Thu, 03 Apr 2003 17:20:33 GMT

I figured it out. For whatever reason, disk1 didn't show up until I ran the Compaq Array Utilities in Windows. Since the problem existed on two identical servers, I opened disk management BEFORE running CAU, and sure enough the new unformatted disk1 showed up the instant I ran that app. Didn't need to hit refresh or anything!

Just wanted to give the issue closure in case there are any lurkers here.