Adding extra drives to mirror

[Johnny Omega]

Hi Everyone

We have a ML370 with a HP Array with only two drives which are mirrored. Ive purchased four new drives, can I add additional drives to increase the capacity of the array without losing any data?

regards

Johnny

[juan quesada]

will depend on controller model/firmware version/battery back writte cache size.

what do you have?

[Johnny Omega]

Its a HP Smart Array 641 F/W 2.68 not sure about the battery cache. I've enclosed the array diagonstic report.

[Ephie]

The smart array 641 controller is an old array controller device and I doubt if it support BBWC device. Therefore, without BBWC, expansion of an existing logical drive capacity is impossible. The best way to go about it with the current configuration is to ghost the hard drive and copy the content of the logical drive to DVD and then wipe the current array configuration and recreate it with new hard drive. Then you can copy back the backed up data to the newly create logical drive.

Hope this help

regards

Max

[Trygve Henriksen]

Actually... wrong.

The stock 641 has 64MB RAM, but there's an upgrade to 128MB with Battery Backup, and it also supports capacity expansion.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=120&prodSeriesId=3745263&prodTypeId=329290&objectID=c00349427

Whether or not the OS you run on the server supports expansion, though, is another matter.

[Trygve Henriksen]

The report indicates it's a stock 641 with 64MB cache and no BatteryBacked RAM.

It may need that option for online expansion.
(I wouldn't run an expansion without the battery even if it would be possible. If the power fails or glitches during expansion.... not good...)

[gregersenj]

I believe, that i dosn't need BBWC to do a RAID level migration / expansion.

I have tried to search for it, and find nothing.

I believe, that this BBWC dependency, has been intriduced with the SAS controllers. P and E models.

I might be wrong.

BR
/jag

[gregersenj]

ACU user guide:

http://docs.hp.com/en/9320/acu.pdf

BR
/jag

[Trygve Henriksen]

This controller DO support expansion.
(We used this exact model in servers earlier)

Which functions does the 'HP Array Configuration Utility' offer?

Which OS do you use?

[gregersenj]

"Which functions does the 'HP Array Configuration Utility' offer?"

You don't know? Trygve.

BR
/jag