RAID configuration questions.

[Ayman Altounji]

Greetings!

We currently have a Compaq ProLiant 2500 with Windows NT for our Exchange server. The server has a SMART-2DH array controller providing RAID-1 (mirroring) with the 2 installed hard drives (2 9Gb drives, one drive (with 2 logical partitions, one for the system NT, the other for Exchange) being mirrored).

I want to break the RAID-1, add 2 new drives, then create a RAID-5 array with all 4 drives (obviously, expanding the logical partition containing Exchange).

This is do-able, right? I just did a search on the newsgroups (deja) and someone said that the 2-DH could not break a mirror. Is this true, or false? Can I break the mirror, install drives, and create a RAID-5? without having anything in the system wiped?

[Ayman Altounji]

Hello Philly,
First of all, Smart 2 NH does not support logical drive extension. This is only supported from array 3100 AS and up. If you want to keep your data, you have to back it up, recreate the array as RAID 5, and restore the data from backup.
Also, Smart 2DH does not RAID level migration. So moving from RAID1 to RAID5 requires a re configuration of the array.