Novell volume size increase

[Clint Lowry]

I have several LH3 running Novell 5.1, raid5 with 3 9.1 gig drives. The drives are SCSI-2. When the SCSI-3 drives were released, HP issued info with concerns of mixing SCSI-2 & SCSI-3 drives on one raid controller. There was concern that data might be lost if the volume size was being increased. I would like to do this (increase volume size, not add volumes). Has a solution been worked out yet? Can a volume size be increased without a great risk of data lost?

Thank you Clint

[Diana Thompson]

No Clint, there is no way to just increase the volume size without losing the NOS.

You can mix U2 and U3 drive in an array as long as you create the array from scratch and initialize the array.

DO NOT try to do a capcity expansion.

Diana

[John Dyer]

I wouldn't try to do this on a production server and mix of drives but if one of those servers are able to be a test server the you can try Server Magic. I have been using smagic for a while and it hasn't given me any problems. Still, I would try this on a test server if you can and make sure you have a backup. Just my humble opinion.

[Richard_30]

I use Server Magic in production and have had no trouble with it. I will stress the need for a clean backup and patience. Practice with it in a test environment until you're totally comfortable, some of the processes cause a bit of stress ;)

This is the cleanest method to resize or relocate NetWare volumes,I highly recommend it.

~r

The J. Paul Getty Trust
Los Angeles, CA

[Richard_30]

As for the original question of mixing drives.

I first be sure all the cabling is up to Ultra3 specs. You should be able to mix the drives, search for known issues on that particular server to be sure.

Utlra3 drives in older A and B rated RS/12 units can have trouble with the older Ultra2 cabling causing noise within the enclosure and possible data corruption.

~r