ML350 and additional drive

[floyd fairbanks]

Running a ML350 with Windows 2000 and a Smart Array 5300 with RAID 5.

What we'd like to do is add an additional drive for more drive space. Is this as simple as slapping in the drive and the Smart Array will configure everything? Is there anything that I'll need to do to get the additional space to be recognized by the C: drive?

Thanks,

- F

[Oleg Mochkin]

You can add drive and then expand existing RAID5. After that you can create new parttion by windows disk managment. Thus you get logical drive D: in windows. You can't expand C: with diskpart.exe because it is root/system.
BR, Oleg

[kcpant]

Hi Floyd,

It's not that easy to add additional space to existing RAID 5 volume, you have to count upon following major things:

1. the new drive you are going to add should be at least of same size( or larger) of existing HDDs.
2. you have to take backup of all your data, reconfigure your RAID after inserting new HDD (with including the new HDD inside), reinstall O/S, and restore the data.

yes, you can do another option, if it is not must to club the new HDD with RAID 5: simply plug it , configure as RAID 0, and format after partitioning.

thanks & regards,

[Guy Humphreys]

Floyd,

You can insert the new drive and extend your current RAID 5 array to include this new drive, using HP's ACU program.

But beware your C drive must be set to dynamic within windows 2000 it cannot be basic, even if you convert it from basic to dynamic that will still not work it must be dynamic from the start.

Cheers
Guy