DL320 G5 hard disk upgrade

[Richard Drinkwater]

We have a DL320 G5 with two sata 250GB disks mirrored Raid 1 using the embedded raid controller. We wish to upgrade the disks to 500GB ones.

With a DL380 we have we were able to pull one of the mirrored 250GB disks and replace with a larger one to rebuild to. With the DL 320 G5 we have pulled one of the 250GB disks and replaced it with a 500GB disk however the raid controller is not automatically rebuilding to the larger disk. Within the raid controller BIOS the new 500GB disk is grayed out and we can't seem to rebuild to it.

Please can anyone advise us as to the correct procedure to follow?

Regards

[Zygmunt Krawczyk]

You need to reboot the server. Serial ATA hot-plug capability are not supported by the DL320 G5 embedded SATA storage controller.

[Ali]

HI Richard,

there are two ways to rebuild the array in Embedded SATA RAID Controller.

1. Shut down the server, replace the failed HDD and reboot the server it should start the rebuild process.

2. Manual rebuild
Add a hotspare to the array if necessary, and select the array for a manual rebuild.

In your case, you may try the manual rebuild option as replacement HDD is bigger in capacity.

HP Embedded SATA RAID Controller user guide.
http://bizsupport.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00771065/c00771065.pdf

Hope this helps,

Thanks,
Aftab

[Richard Drinkwater]

Thank you for the replies so far.

Following the instructions kindly supplied so far we have now been able to rebuild our 250GB mirrored raid 1 array onto two 500GB hard disks.

Please can anyone suggest how to get the 250GB volume to expand into the 500GB disk?

Disk management in Windows 2003 server can still see only one 250GB (less formatting) volume and HP Storage Manager does not see the larger disks either.

Regards

[Ali]

As per standard smart array controller feature, you should be able to expand the array and create new logical drive out of added space.

Increasing the size of exiting partition is not done by raid utility as it's OS function or you may need third party tool to extend the partition.

we need to explore whether B110i support capacity extension. b110i user guide does not give detailed information
http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01706551/c01706551.pdf

We may try few things, before we research more on this issue

1. first step is to take full backup.
2. power cycle the server and check the array and logical drive status in offline ACU.
3. check and update system bios and b110i controller firmware to see whether it makes any difference.

thanks,
aftab

[Richard Drinkwater]

Hi aftab,

I do not think the DL320 G5 uses a Smart Array B110i controller.

I am familiar with Gparted and similar to expand a partition, if I could only get the raid controller to make the extra space available.

Regards