adding 4345r enclosure

[Ayman Altounji]

I have a proliant 3000 with a Smart array 3200 and 6 internal drives. I got a 4345r enclosure to add more disk space. Even though the enclosure drives will be on a different SCSI bus, can I add the enclosure drives to the existing raid-5 array of the internal drives? If not, can I create a second raid-5 array and still add the extra space to the same drive letter in Winnt 4.0?

Thanks,
Rich

[Ayman Altounji]

Rich,
You can attach the cabinet to the same controller and have them seen as part of the same array. That's the easy part.

However, NT4 isn't so gracious about expanding the partitions/drive letters (2000 allows for dynamic disks!!!). You could use products such as ServerMagic/Partition Magic, but that requires some extra care and more potential issues. Unfortunately if you lose everything you won't have a lot of recourse...NT does have volume sets, and while it's better because it's being handled by a RAID controller instead of just software, it still requires a higher degree of overhead...

Stephen

[Ayman Altounji]

Actually - the array controller can do the expansion itself (logical drives) depending on the exact configuration in use now. The only real reason NOT to include all of those drives in the same RAID5 array is that the more drives you put in it, the more likely one may fail (putting all your chickens in one basket - so to speak).