Expanding RAID 1 from 2 to 4TB without adding drives - Proliant Microserver Gen 8 - B120i

[Mike-D-]

 Hi all,

I am the happy owner of a Proliant Microserver Gen 8, it fulfilling its purpose as backup server for my photography and media. for the backup i have a RAID 1 array of 2x2tb in bay 1 and 2. the drives in 3 and 4 are simple volumes. its running perfectly smooth for the past year.

The 2x2TB RAID array was getting full, so i ordered 2x4TB drives. i first removed bay 3 and 4, and made a backup of my RAID aray in bay 1 and 2. i swapped out bay 1 for a 4TB and let it rebuild. windows boots, all is fine. i swap out bay 2 for a 4TB and let it rebuild again. after some boot issues where the correct bootsequence was lost this also booted correctly after changing the bootsequence.  (it boots from SSD on bay 5)

- the question: so i now have a working 1.8 TB RAID 1 on a set drives of 4TB. i now need to extend the RAID to its full capacity. i only find topics concerning extending RAIDs by adding physical drives or creating new logical volumes on the array, not by replacing them for bigger drives and expanding the original logical volume. i do not find any options to extand/expand/increase the storage size of this RAID1 to 4TB. 

Is there any outline of these steps? or previous post you guys recall that i could not find?

Thanks in advance for all the help!

Mike.

[Jimmy Vance]

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@Mike-D- wrote:

 Hi all,

This is my first post here, not sure if i chose the right category so please move if i chose wrong. 

I am the happy owner of a Proliant Microserver Gen 8, it fulfilling its purpose as backup server for my photography and media. for the backup i have a RAID 1 array of 2x2tb in bay 1 and 2. the drives in 3 and 4 are simple volumes. its running perfectly smooth for the past year.

The 2x2TB RAID array was getting full, so i ordered 2x4TB drives. i first removed bay 3 and 4, and made a backup of my RAID aray in bay 1 and 2. i swapped out bay 1 for a 4TB and let it rebuild. windows boots, all is fine. i swap out bay 2 for a 4TB and let it rebuild again. after some boot issues where the correct bootsequence was lost this also booted correctly after changing the bootsequence.  (it boots from SSD on bay 5)

- the question: so i now have a working 1.8 TB RAID 1 on a set drives of 4TB. i now need to extend the RAID to its full capacity. i only find topics concerning extending RAIDs by adding physical drives or creating new logical volumes on the array, not by replacing them for bigger drives and expanding the original logical volume. i do not find any options to extand/expand/increase the storage size of this RAID1 to 4TB. 

Is there any outline of these steps? or previous post you guys recall that i could not find?

Thanks in advance for all the help!

Mike.

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I commend you for giving that a go on a B120i. Unfortuanelty to expand an array requires a cache module and for the Microserver Gen8, there is no provision to add a cache module to the B120i. You can install a HP Smart Array P222/512 FBWC Controller, part number 631667-B21.   If you go this route, I've never tried using the ODD port with a drive while using the P222 but I'd assume as long as you leave the B120i enabled the drive on the ODD port will still be functional.

[Mike-D-]

Thanks for your reply Jimmy,

Needless to say, i am quite a noob in this field. I had some help installing the server from a IT friend of mine. i see the problem of a RAID controller with no cache, but swapping around controllers seems a bit too much for me, but the good news is i did manage to get it they way i want it. not the cleanest but it worked:

rebuilding the 2TB RAID with 4TB drives left me with an array of 1.8 TB. I simply deleted the array and created a new one on full 3.8 TB size of the array, but all data was now gone. thankfully i did make a backup so i was able to transfer this to the new array. 

But good to know in the future that my original plan will not work on this B120i controller!