topic Re: NetRAID Express Tool in Netservers

NetRAID Express Tool

Colin Battersby — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 14:39:29 GMT

Does anyone know where the is a user manual for the Express Tool on the HP NetRAID 3si card? I have six physical disks that are formatted with RAID 0. I now want to take 2 of the disks and stripe them together. Can I do this without wiping the whole configuration?

Regards.

Col.

Re: NetRAID Express Tool

Enes Dizdarevic — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 15:43:22 GMT

If you have one raid0 logical disk created from 6 physical disks there is no way to exclude two physical disks and use them for another logical drive without clearing configration (and losing data).
If you had 6 raid0 logical disks (1 physical disk for each) you could delete last created logical disk and using this freed physical disk change raid level of one raid0 disk to raid1. This could be done easily using NetRaid Assistent. (OS based netraid configuration tool).

Re: NetRAID Express Tool

Marco Hogeveen — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 15:46:26 GMT

Colin,

The netraid USer's guide can be downloaded from:
http://netserver.hp.com/docs/download.asp?file=netrdusergd.pdf
This includes the netraid express tools.
Migrating logical drives, however, cannot be done from within Express Tools.
You will have to use netraid assistant to change raid level.
I don't think that changing 2 standalone disks to a RAID0 of 2 disks is possible without losing your data.
...Why RAID0? It's very dangerous, I wouldn't recommend anyone, unless your data is not important.

Hope this helps,

Marco.

Re: NetRAID Express Tool

Colin Battersby — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 16:12:55 GMT

Marco, in theory I am not using any RAID because each physical drive has its own logical drive. For some reason it likes to say I am using RAID 0! I would like to take 2 of these physical drives and stripe them together. The NetRAID tool doesn't allow me to do this! Is there a quick way to make ONLINE drives back to a READY state?

Col.

Re: NetRAID Express Tool

Marino Meloni_1 — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 16:24:00 GMT

hi
first of all did you have:
--six LD (logical devices ) composed with a hdd in raid 0 ( at boot time you will get a message saying you 6 logical drive found six logical drives handled by bios)
-- one LD coposed with six hdd spriped in raid 0
in the first case, you can "fail drive" than format it, you will found a ready disk
in the second case you cannot keep out two disk from a Logical device in raid 0
bye
marino

Re: NetRAID Express Tool

Colin Battersby — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 16:38:57 GMT

marino, the first description is correct! I have just tried taking the physical drives offline, and then formatting them! Then they are still in a failed state, not a READY state! If I make them online again, they return to how they were!

Any other ideas?

Col

Re: NetRAID Express Tool

Marco Hogeveen — Tue, 20 Nov 2001 18:47:59 GMT

Colin,

If you're using NT or W2K you can delete the last logical drive created from within Netraid Assistant (use the latest version).
- right-mouse-click on the logical drive with the highest number and select 'delete'
This will get your drive in a ready state.
By doing this twice you can reconfigure them as a 2 disk RAID0.
It's true that standalone disks are displayed as RAID0 disks on a netraid controller.

Marco.

Re: NetRAID Express Tool

Colin Battersby — Wed, 21 Nov 2001 13:56:21 GMT

Thanks to everyone's help!

The new version of NetRAID assistant allowed me to do what I wanted!

So thanks again!

Col.