Proliant ML 350 Scsi drive upgrades

[Ray McCarthy]

My system is running NT4 SP6, Smart array 431 controller, raid 5.
I have three drives of 9.1gb each. I have just purchased 3 36gb drives to replace these. I am also bringing memory up to 1gb. Can i assume that if i replace one of the drives at a time, allowing the re-writing of data to that drive, then when all drives have been replaced, I can then extend the array from 17gb to 51gb without having to restore any data.

[Vijay_44 · Accepted solution]

Yes you can do it; just make sure that the rebuild process finished before you remove the next drive. When all 3 drives have been replace you should have some unused space in the array, you can then extend your logical drive.

Make sure you have a recent, valid backup before starting :-)

[Ray McCarthy]

Thanks for that. Will 24 hours be enough do you think?
Ray

[Ray McCarthy]

My array has increased to 64gb, and the parity check it had to do finally completed after 4 days. The server is split into a C: & D:\ drive, and I want to increase the D:\ drive from 13gb to include all available space. I thought this might have occurred automatically, but it didn't. Is there something else I need to do to get the D:\ drive to use available space on array.
Thanks

[Chris Wilkins_2]

Ray -
You must manually extend the partition from the disk management snapin. There are certain cases where this won't work - If you already have a stripe set for instance.

Good Luck

Chris