Combine logical RAID drives on ML350 G4

[samd_1]

Our Proliant ML350 G4 has low space on the C drive. Basically about 400MB free and I feel like eventually it will become critical and something needs to be done now as it's our DC, DHCP, WINS, DNS server. The server was set up such that there is a physical 33GB drive that is in a RAID 1 that is divided in the HP RAID to have a 10GB logical drive and a 23GB logical drive. Therefore I have a 10GB C drive and a 23GB D drive. There's an additional 68GB drive in a RAID 1 configuration that the HP RAID software has as all one drive.

What I'd like to do is combine, if possible, the logical 10GB drive/partition and the 23GB drive/partition. The data on the D drive can be moved so that's not an issue. But can the HP software combine this somehow? I think the problem is that this was done with the HP software so to the operating system (Windows 2003) the drives looks like 2 physical drives.

[Michael A. McKenney]

I would consider backup and replace the drives with RAID 1 for OS using 146GB drives. You will have more space. Do you have a second domain controller? If not, get one. You should have two DCs and then a member server for your applications. Microsoft best practice is two DC servers and member servers for your applications. You can put DNS and DHCP on your DC.

[samd_1]

Yeah we have 2 DCs. So that's not the problem.

I guess an idea is to buy 2 bigger drives as you mention and replace them one at a time. Would this then make it possible for the RAID 1 to be bigger without having to backup and restore the data? I'm just unclear how to change the logical RAID configuration without having to wipe out everything from scratch.

[samd_1]

Anyone have other ideas if I can combine the drives via some HP utility or something else?

[Terry Hutchings]

HP's utilities are not designed to do what you are looking for. The array config utility allows you to migrate from a raid 1 to raid 5 and make a raid 5 larger by adding additional drives (among other migrations it will allow), but the HP utilities will not do anything about the partitions within the OS.

I do not believe there is really much that can be done on that end. The best option may be to do what has already been recommended and back/restore onto the newer array config.

[samd_1]

Expanding the OS partition is easy enough with a 3rd party utiility. However since the RAID 1's are defined by the HP utility I need the HP utility to effectively be able to expand the RAID 1 after I delete the other RAID 1. Can it do that?

THere are 2 33GB physical drives for instance now making up the 2 RAID 1s.

10GB RAID 1
23GB RAID 1

Can I delete the 23GB RAID 1 in the HP utility and then expand the first 10GB RAID to include the 23GB without losing any data? After this all I would need is a 3rd party utility that can expand the system partition in Windows 2003.