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Upgrading ALL my drives...

 
Rob Dobrowski
New Member

Upgrading ALL my drives...

I have a Proliant ML370 running Windows 2000 server, with a Smart Array 3200 controller, and it has 6 18.3GB drives in a RAID 5. I need to upgrade all 6 of my drives to larger, 72GB drives. What is the best method of accomplishing this, and how long will it take? If I swap out one drive at a time, and constantly reboot, will the RAID controller re-stripe the data? Do I need to use the SmartStart cd for any configuration settings? Please help a newbie make this a smooth transition...
1 REPLY 1
e4services
Honored Contributor

Re: Upgrading ALL my drives...

Yes, if you swap out each drive one at a time, hot plug, no reboot, each drive will rebuild.
No, you do not need a CD.
Yes, It is time consuming but you do not need to shut down the server. When finally the last drive is rebuilt , you will have the original logical drives but the balance of the unformated space now available to create a new logical drive.
Unfortunately there are some problems with expanding the original logical drives.
If one is the boot, take care to verify you are able to increase it's size and still boot the drive (i.e. NT has a limit).
You require ServerMagic or VolumeManager to manipulate server OS product Volumes.
Hot Swap Hard Drives