Netserver LX Pro 4.2Gb disks to 92.Gb disks

[Rui Caetano]

I inherited a Netserver LX Pro and I've been slowly adding capacity to it using items from ebay. The server came with a RAID 5 configuration using 5 4.2Gb disks. They other day I got 5 9.2Gb disks on ebay and have replaced all of the drives with the new disks. My question is: How can I take advantage of the new capacity with out having to reinstall everything?

[Sean T. Craig]

Hi Rui,

Could you send a few more details so we can help you with this? Here's some of the information that will help:

1. How many drive cages/bays installed? We need to know if there is space for all 10 drives.

2. Which RAID controller are you using? This will let us know which utility to use for configuring your arrays.

3. Which Operating System are you using?

4. Detail the steps you have already taken. You said you replaced the 5 drives. How did you do that? Did you pull all 5 at the same time and then plug in the 5 9GB drives or did you replace them one by one while the server was running?

Let us know and we'll do our best to advise you. Ideally, the best way is to start over, restoring from backup but everyone knows what a hassle that is. If the conditions are right, and the stars are aligned, and the ocean is the correct shade of mauve, we may be able to create a second RAID-5 with your new drives, image the information over from the old drives, and then recreate your config without the first set of drives.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Sean T. Craig Sr. C.E.T., M.C.P.

[Rui Caetano]

There's only one cage. What I did is I failed each 4.2Gb drive and replaced it with a 9.2Gb drive all while the server was running and let the RAID rebuild before replacing the next.

It is a NetRaid controller and I have the HP NetRaid Assistant software installed or I could go into the controllers BIOS configuration utility.

The operating system is Win2K server.

I see what you are saying. If I have two cages then I can just use something like Ghost and mirror everything over to another set and then mirror it back. I'll see if I can get another cage going unless you come up with another way.

Thanks for your help.

[e4services]

That is better, so you rebuild the array between each drive replacement. In that case you now have your original logical volumes and the rest of the new space is free space ready to be incorporated.\This is a 2 tiered process. First is to expand the array, so the contoller will consider the drives as 9GBs each instead of the 4 it now consiiders them. Next is to incorporate the addition space into the logical drive space for use by the OS.

You can use the NetRAID Assistant to expand an existing RAID-5 array logical drive into the free space.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?locBasepartNum=ns1048en〈=English&locale=en_US
This will expand your RAID-5 to include the new space. What it will not do is add capacity to your partition. Windows Disk Management (or Disk Administrator in Windows NT) will show Unallocated Space after a reboot.

You then have three choices:
1. Partition that space into another drive letter (i.e. D:, E:, etc)

2. If you have multiple partitions, you can use diskpart.exe to expand an extended partition. Microsoft does not allow you to expand primary partitions. If your RAID-5 is a single C: drive, you cannot use this utility.

3. You can use a 3rd party partitioning software to expand the primary partition. This solution is not supported by HP and you do so at your own risk.

Either way, after you expand a RAID-5, you have to restart the server in order for Windows to detect the new space.

[Rui Caetano]

Thanks for the link to the updated NetRAID Assistant the version I had was really old.

You've been great so far but I've looked through the NetRAID Assistant menus and I don't see an option for expanding an existing RAID 5 array logical drive. Do you know where I would find that option? I tried the main menu and all of the right-click context menus.

[e4services]

I will have to check that. I thought you select the logical and the free space and right click for add capacity

[Rui Caetano]

Thanks for all of your help I think that I figured it out. Going through the NetRAID Assistant software I was able to add another Logical drive from the free space. That's fine for what I'm going to do with it.

Thanks for all of your help.

[e4services · Accepted solution]

Well you found out faster than I could. As it turns out, that is the only way to handle it.
Replacing each disk with a larger capacity disk, rebuilding each replacement. Once all are replaced, you can us the NetRAID Assistant or the BIOS Configurator () to configure a new logical drive in the now available free space.

There is no way to 'expand' the existing logical drive into the newly created space.
The "Add" function of the NetRAID software only functions with the addition of additional drives.