Replacing drives in RAID 1+0 for larger drives

[João Guedes]

Hello All!

I've just started at sysadmin in a new company and inherited an Exchange server running out of disk space.

To give it more space I would like to replace the drives in one of the arrays.

It's a RAID 1+0 array with two 32GB drives.
I would like to replace these with two 300GB drives that are not in use at the moment.

My plan is to replace one of the drives, let it replicate and rebuild, replace the other, replicate and rebuild, and then use ACU to expand the logical volume to use the whole space available.

Are these the appropriate steps?

Also, I have one concern: when I plug them in they will always be considered as "new drives" and replicate from the "old" 32GB drive right?
No danger of having the data from the 300GB overwritting the data in the 32GB drives?

Thank you very much for any help!!!

[Steven Clementi · Accepted solution]

You have the basic steps.

After you expand the Logical Disk, you will need to Extend the partition in Windows or create a new partition.

What version of Windows is running?

Is this a separate drive array from your OS drive(s)?


As long as you do the swap while the server is running... the array controller will replace the failed 33GB drive with the 300GB drive and replicate the data from the existing 33GB drive to the new replacement.

Make sure you do a backup before you start swapping drives. Always cover youself.


Steven

[João Guedes]

Steve, thank you for taking the time to write.

In my eagerness to get an answer I forgot to give all the details. :)

Server is a Proliant DL380 running Windows 2003 Standard x64

It has 3 RAID 1+0 arrays

A (system), 32GB drives
B, 32GB drives
C, 72GB drives

I'm replacing on array B. So everything should be fine. :)

Many thanks!

[Steven Clementi]

So, after you expand the logical drive...

run Diskpart.exe on the server

This drops you into a command shell

type

list disk (this lists all the disks available on the system)

select disk 1 (this sets the focus to the second disk.. select the appropiate number by looking at the listing of disks.)

select partition 1 (this sets the first partition on the disk as the focus. You can "list partition" first to see if there are others to select from.. but being it is such a small set of original drives, you probably only have 1 partition.)

extend (this extends the existing partition all the way to the end of the available space.)


Keep in mind that you should probably shut down the Exchange services before extending the disk with diskpart.


Steven