LH3 Drive Partitioning

[Mike_245]

I don't like the way my IT predecessor partitioned our Netserver LH3 - currently into 4 separate logical drives (C, D,E and G). What tools do I need to repartition the drives into fewer drives. Thanks.

[kris rombauts]

Hi Mike,

we have to see first if you talk about Logical Drives at the hardware level or at the Windows disk management level.


If the LH3 has its raid controller configured (very likely since functionality is embedded)
and you have one RAID array that has been divided into 4 logical drives then their is no other solution then to work at the lower level and use the Netraid assistant utility to delete some logical drives starting with the latest (highest number) first.

In case you have multiple raid arrays (i.e. A0, A1, A2 ..) configured, you can only start to delete from the highest raid array number, starting with it's highest logical drive number in their.

So you'll need to :

1) backup the drive letter in Windows that
corresponds to this logical drive.

2) delete that logical drive/partition via the NT disk administrator/w2k disk management

3) then delete the logical drive from the raid
array configuration with the help of
Netraid Assistant.

Do these 3 steps a couple of times (once per logical drive you want to remove) if the idea is to merge 2 or 3 logical drives into one bigger one.



If you talk however about logical drives at the Windows level (disk administrator) and only have one logical drive in the raid array (logical drive size is equal to raid array capacity) then simply backup the drive, delete logical drive(s) and make a bigger one out of two or three that you deleted. All of this is done via NT disk administrator (or disk manager if you have w2k).


Both of these scenarios i listed can be done online.

HTH

Kris

[Mike_245]

Thanks for your detailed reply. The server actually has 12 physical drives installed @10gb ea. in case this changes your procedure any.

[kris rombauts]

H Mike,

for me to know if i need to add more information to be able to answer your question 100% i need to have details on how those 10 disks are setup in the raid configuration and in disk administrator/disk manager in Windows.

Since you talked about having 4 drives in Windows i guess you might have some combination of maybe RAID1 (2 disks for the OS to boot from) then some other set of 4 disk in RAID5 i.e.

This is the kind of info i need and you can collect


1) the RAID config in a text file or you can
attach a screenshot from the Netraid
Assistant to this forum reply. Here is how
to collect the config in text format:

- start Netraid Assistant
- select Adapter, then Properties in
the pull down menu
- select the data in the small window and cut
& paste into a file or post it in your
reply. I provided an example below :


2) To collect the partitioning info either
take a screenshot from the disk
manager/disk management window or run the
resource kit utility called dumpcfg.exe.
This will give an idea about the
partitioning and drive letters.


regards, Kris


Example of raid config:
-----------------------
This example would give you by default 3 drive letters in Windows. As you can see this is a 5 disk config split up in:

- 2 disks in RAID1 with one logical drive
- 3 disks in RAID5 with two logical drives
(and even lots of free space left that is
not used for the moment and in which later
on new logical drives can be created)



Number Of Logical Drives: 3.

Logical Drive 0
State : Optimal
RAID TYPE : 1
Write Policy : Write Back
Read Policy : Adaptive Read Ahead
Cache Policy : Cached I/O
Stripe Size : 64K Bytes
No. of Stripes : 2
Size : 17365MB
Component Physical Drives :

RANK 0
CHANNEL : 0, ID : 9
CHANNEL : 0, ID : 8

Logical Drive 1
State : Optimal
RAID TYPE : 5
Write Policy : Write Back
Read Policy : Adaptive Read Ahead
Cache Policy : Cached I/O
Stripe Size : 64K Bytes
No. of Stripes : 3
Size : 1000MB
Component Physical Drives :

RANK 0
CHANNEL : 0, ID : 0
CHANNEL : 0, ID : 1
CHANNEL : 0, ID : 2

Logical Drive 2
State : Optimal
RAID TYPE : 5
Write Policy : Write Back
Read Policy : Adaptive Read Ahead
Cache Policy : Cached I/O
Stripe Size : 64K Bytes
No. of Stripes : 3
Size : 10000MB
Component Physical Drives :

RANK 0
CHANNEL : 0, ID : 0
CHANNEL : 0, ID : 1
CHANNEL : 0, ID : 2