Raid 5 Array and Logical Drive Expansion

[Ronnie Duquette]

Hi all,
I recently performed a Array expansion. The Array rebuild completed and now it is on a background parity check. My question is :

When will the drive space actually appear in Windows 2000 on the logical drive?

The parity check has been running for about 15 hours now.

Config:
Windows 2000 SP4
HP ACU Utility 7.0
Smart Array Controller 3200

Thanks
Ronnie

[Stephen Kebbell · Accepted solution]

Hi Ronnie,

when you expand your array and extend your logical drive (both done in ACU), you should see the corresponding "Disk" in Windows Disk Management with unused free space at the end. Your partition won't change in size until you increase that, too. If it's a Dynamic Disk you can simply increase the size. If it's a basic disk you will need the diskpart utility from Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/new/diskpart-o.asp

Here's a How-To for Diskpart:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325590

As always, have a good backup available before changing any hard disk/partition configuration.

The background parity check can take a while, depending on the size of the array. But you don't have to wait for that to finish to use the extra space.

Regards,
Stephen

[Steven Clementi]

Ronnie:

You expanded the array with new/available drives, but did you extend the logical drive(s) as well? The new space will appear only after you expand a logical drive, not the array.


Keep in mind that diskpart may/will not work on disks which contain a system/OS partition. I say "may/will" only because I have never seen it work, but the MS article's wording is slightly misleading (to me at least).


Steven

[Ronnie Duquette]

Thanks for your responses!!!
All set now.