Cannot change RAID from 0 to 5

[Ben Wold]

I have an MSA20 attached to a 642 controller
the MSA has 3 drives that I setup as RAID0. I want to change it to RAID5 but cpqonlin.nlm tells me that there isn't enough space at the end of the Array. About 170GB of the array is being used. The rest is free space. Any idea why this will not change to RAID5?
Thanks

[Shameer.V.A]

Hi Ben,
What is the capapcity of the disk you have?? Is it 144GB or 73GB if it is 73GB then you can't use more than 135GB, balance will be used for parity..

Regards,

Shameer

[e4services]

You need to add more disks to convert to RAID 5. that is 3 disks in a RAID 0 does not = 3 disks in a RAID 5, for 1 of the disk's capacity in the RAID 5 is used up for the redundancy you did not have in the RAID 0.
Better you backup the data, clear your RAID configuration, reconstruct a new RAID5 of larger capacity and restore.

[Ben Wold]

I have 3 additional drives that I can use to expand the array. I just add them, expand the array. Leave it as unused space and then expand my array?

BTW, these are SATA 160GB.
I know, I know RAID 0 on SATA. It was a late, late night mistake.

[Ben Wold]

I meant ot say:

I have 3 additional drives that I can use to expand the array. Can I just use them to expand the array, leave it as unused space and then change RAID type?