Changing RAID 1 to RAID5

[CA1260540]

My company has an HP LT 6000 R server running Exchange 2000 in RAID1 environment. They have 2 - 18.2 GB drives and 1 hot swappable 18.2 drive on this server. The problem is poor planning by my predecessor, the exchange database has grown to a size that no longer allows to defragment the database and we must daily remove log files from the drive to prevent running out of space. We are running in a Windows 2000 ADS environment with only one Exchange server. It was mentioned to me that I might be able change the RAID setting from 1 to 5 including all 3 drives without having to rebuild the server. My question is has anyone every heard of doing this on the fly? What is required to do it?

[Mic V.]

I did some looking around but didn't find anything saying you could. I've heard of doing this with Linux, but it's supposed to be liable to human error.

It kinda sounds like your predecessor was actually trying to do the right thing for protecting the data (but you know the situation much better than I do!). I personally prefer to keep mission-critical data in RAID-1, having had two drives in a RAID-5 set die at the same time on a critical server.

http://www.certmag.com/articles/templates/cmag_department_sec.asp?articleid=1101&zoneid=93

For more capacity, have you all thought about getting additional (external) storage to support Exchange?

Best wishes,
Mic