DL380G4 SmartArray 6i - clone RAID5

[Jacek_20]

Hello,

I have 3x36gb disk set in a RAID5. Systemp artition C: has ~14gb and E has ~53gb. Now I need more space so I bought 3x300gb and have to change disks. What is the best souluition:

1. I can change disk one by one, but I'm not sure if later I could expand system partition using free space on Windows 2003 Server?

2. Maybe it is possible to use image software like GHOST to make image of existing RAID5 array and restore it to the new array? What happned when I remove old disks and put new one? Does the system boot up?

I would like to be able to start the system form old RAID 5 disk if something goes wrong :)

I will be grateful for suggestions how to do that safely.

Best Regards

[Víctor Cespón]

Option 1: replace each 36 GB by a 300 GB disk, one by one, letting the RAID rebuild between changes. You'll end up with a RAID with 600 GB usable, of which 72 will be used by C: and D: partitions and the rest free. I don't think you can expand C: if there are a D: between it and the free space.

Option 2: make an image of the existing C: and D:, set up a new RAID with the 300 GB disks and then restore the image. Depending on the software it would have to be able to handle disks on a Smart Array.

In any case you keep the 3 36 GB disks untouched.

[TTr]

Option 1 is standard practice with arrays but whenever you do array work, always run a backup before you start.

However, if you replace the the 36GB disks while the server is running, they will not make up a RAID set because they would have been removed from the array at different times and would have different data in them. They are reusable but do not make up a RAID set.

However if you can perform option 1 from the BIOS menu (if you can access the array utilities in the BIOS) then the 3 36GB disk would make up a RAID set and could be used to reboot the server from them.

[Jonny 5 is alive]

Could you create a mirror of the RAID5 set (RAID 5+1) mirroring 3x36 to 3x300 drives, then break the mirror.

Drive C: will remain 14GB and Drive D: will initially be 53GB but can be expanded in W2003 Disk Manager, or just create a new Drive F:.

Drive C: cannot be expanded using W2003 Disk Manager (The System Drive cannot be altered in Windows). You would need a Third Party software if you needed to incrase it's capacity, but the ones I've tried failed to work. I needed extra C: drive space and couldn't get it to work so I eventually just moved everything I could off, including uninstalled and re-installing some programs into the E: drive, then creating NTFS Mount points for large folder where I could. eg. Software Distribution folder, MYOB AccountantsOffice, Symantec LiveUpdate. Recently I uninstalled Symantec and installed Sophos, that freed up many GBs.