DL360 Disk expansion

[Glonn]

HI

I have a DL360 with 2 x 18Gb raid 1 disks (OS and Data on 2 partitions) I now need to increase disk space - can I replace one with a larger disk, let it rebuild, then replace the other also with a larger disk? When these have rebuilt will I be able to use the spare space?

Hope this is clear, thanks in advance

Glenn

[Daniel Leblanc]

Are these 2 HD of 18 gb set in a raid?(raid0,raid1,raid0+1 or RADI5)

[is66rlh]

you can't do raid 5 with only 2 drives

if this is under windows and set as partitiones then you'll need to re-partition the logical (raid) drive

I'm guessing your mirroring because striping (raid 0) will not allow you to remove a drive like that

you have a few layers to imagine

top OS logical (this is the partition you made in windows or in OS setup)

Array logical (the OS sees it a Physical and this is set-up in the pre-OS level)

Physical (the actual drives)

if windows has it as a dynamic volume then it'll make things easy on you as that can be expanded

by changing 1 physical drive but not the other the array will let the "extra" space be unused or not in the array logical and rebuild the array as it was

by changing the other drive afterward you allow the arry logical to be expanded

then the hard part some partition programs may help but if you have a partition and a dynamic volume as 2 OS level partitions then you can expand the dynamic volume


Hope this helps

[Mike Bollman_1 · Accepted solution]

Glonn,
First off a couple of assumptions here:

1) I assume this is a windows box, either win2k SP4 or Win2k3, Yes/NO?
2) The OS is the first partition and the Data volume is the second partition
3) You wish to extend the data partition only

If so here is what you do

1) Create a good full backup system
2) Remove one drive and replace with larger capacity drive (say 36GB)
3) let array rebuild
4) after array rebuilds from first drive replacement swap 2nd drive
5) let array rebuild
6) using ACU expand the array
7) goto dos prompt
8) run diskpart.exe
9) use "list disk" command; make note of the disk# you wish to extend
10) use "select disk x" where x is the # of the disk you wish to extend
11) use "list volume" command; make note of the volume# you wish to extend
12) use "select volume x" where x is the # of the volume you wish to extend.
13) use the "extend" command to extend the volume.

This will add the new free space to your 2nd volume, data, at the end of the disk.

Hope this helps

Mike B.

[Glonn]

Thanks for all the replies especially Mike -

Your assumptions were correct Win2k sp4 with 1st partition OS and 2nd Partition Data - we only need to expand the data area

I will try and use your procedure, looks a lot simper / safer than backing up and rebuilding on larger disks

Thanks again for all replies

Glonn

[Louis Henninger_1]

The only thing I can add is:

Before running DiskPart, make sure the service "Virtual Disk Service" is either set to auto or manual. Other wise when you type in DiskPart at the cmd prompt, the service will fail to start.

Regards,

Louis

[is66rlh]

also untill the proccess is done keep that first drive you removed as it would provide an easy back-up if things go wrong

if that happens do a full sutdown and have that as the only drive

this way it will give an error that the array is incomplete but it should boot then as that is the active drive you can put in another drive and have it rebuild again and then try to find what went wrong

I don't think you'll have any trouble