introducing bigger hard drives to a raid 1 hardware mirror set

[jason blake]

Hi...

currently have a ml370 G3 server with 2 18.2 gb disks in a raid 1 array and 4 36.4 gb disks in a raid 5 array. cant remember what raid conttroller it is.

is it possible to introduce bigger hard drives into the raid 1 hardware mirror set as I can see in the near future space becoming an issue

ie take one of the 18.2 disks out... and replacing it with a 36.4.... will it then rebuild ok to this disk. ? then once finished... take the other 18.2 gb disk out and replace this with anotehr 36.4 gb disk..

[Mauro Rusignuolo]

yes.
it is possible.

bye.

TJK.

[GB Tek]

Yes that will work but remember that the original size of the mirror was 18.2gb. It will remain that size even if you put in 72gb drives. I'd suggest ghosting your server (make an image), put in the 36gb drives, make a raid 1 mirror, and then put the image on the new mirror.

[jason blake]

could i not just introduce the bigger drives into the mirror set..... wait for all the rebuilding to happen... then jsut make the partition bigger in the the unallocated space using acronis or something like that ?

[GB Tek]

The controllers job is to keep the integrity of the data. As you set it up, it would keep 2 18gb drives identical to each other. The logical unit was 18gb. By introducing a larger hard drive, the controller sees that it has 18gb or more to work with but still only uses the 18gb logical unit. Just remember the controller has 1 important job to do. To introduce a larger logical unit, you'd have to do as I previouly recommended.

[jason blake]

will the ghosting program see the raid 5 logical drive ?

so i could ghost an image of the existing mirror to that... then create a new hardware mirror set with the 2 new bigger drives. then ghost the image created on the raid 5 set back to the new raid 1 set ?

[GB Tek]

will the ghosting program see the raid 5 logical drive ?

Yes. I'd use Bart PE if I were you.

so i could ghost an image of the existing mirror to that... then create a new hardware mirror set with the 2 new bigger drives. then ghost the image created on the raid 5 set back to the new raid 1 set ?

That would work.