Background Parity initialization

[Ayman Altounji]

Have added 3 more hot plug scsi wide2 drives to existing raid 5 array with 9.1Gb drives. Used online NT ACU to expand space and asked it to extend existing logical drive. I understand that this will only be seen by NT after re-boot. Problem is that ACU is telling me that the backgound parity initialization is in progress (msg 15645). Should I wait (How long for gawd's sake!), or should I reboot now? If I have to wait, can the server still perform it's duties as normal (albeit in a slower i/o disk write state)?

Thanks.

[Ayman Altounji]

Took 15 hours! success, though. Used Powerquest Servermagic to extend partitions (took 2 hours) and all is running smoothly.

To Compaq ----- Perhaps a little more info on faq forum to set timing expectations would be usefull, as adding hot plug drives is hardly an unusual event. After all, what is a smart array for otherwise?

[Ayman Altounji]

during parity initialization all disks work in a normal fashion.

you can work normally.

you have full raid protection from the very first moment !!

however, performance will be a little bit (not very much indeed !) lower than after initialization has finished. it is a background process with low priority and will the longer if you have high disk activity.

ernesto from germany