Adding additional drive to an array

[Jeff Scheffler]

I have an existing disk array (RAID 5) using 3 36gb drives in an HP RackStorage 12. I would like to add additional 36gb drives to the existing array if possible while suffering the least amount of pain.

[Andreas Voss]

Hi,

what is your question ?
Have you an AutoRaid 12H ??
If so then i see no problems by adding additional disks.
Just do it on the fly but step by step. After inserting a disk wait until the AutoRAID sytem has done his including/rebuilding.

Regards

[Jeff Scheffler]

I don't believe I have an Autoraid system, it's the "older style" NetServer Rack Storage/12

[Franco Cenati]

Again Hi Jeff

it's possible to expand an existing logical drive only with Windows NT 4.0. I never tried with Win2K.

So if you have win NT 4. Install NetRAID Assistant A.02.02 in Win NT.
It possible to expand the Logical Drive only if it uses the entire array.
Select the 3 new disks shown as READY, select the logical drive you want to expand,
On the menu select : logical drive/Change Config/ Add capacity. Select the final RAID level.
when the expansion starts you will see a "Rebuilding" window.
The process cannot be stopped and is not possible to go back to the previous configuration.

When the rebuil is finished, you have to reboot Win NT4.0 to be able to see the new space inside Disk Administrator.

Before to start I suggest you to do a full backup of data you have on the disks. Usually the things go right but you know the Murphy's laws. If something goes wrong you may lose all the data.

Bye
Franco