Smart Array 5i extending logical drive - Windows 2000 server

[bo cheng]

Hi,

I have a DL380 G2 with embedded 5i card. It has four 36G disks. Two arrays A and B.

A has only one disk and one logical dirve RAID 0. This logical drive is partitioned to two partitions, C: for Win2K SP4 sys/boot partition. Another data partition E:. All Windows volumes are basic, and I don't want to convert them to dynamic.

B has 3 disks configured as one RAID 5 logical drive, which is parititioned to two partitions F and G.

Now I have got two more 36G disks and want to:
1. make the sys/boot partition on RAID 1 instead of single disk.

2. make C: partition larger. Preferrably it takes all 36G and eliminates E: - stuff on E: can be deleted after part of it is copied to somewhere else.

3. extend size of F or G for the added 36G space but I can live with a separate logical drive/partition

I know I have 3 tasks:

1. add the new disks one each to array A and B, and expand the arrays to include the new disks

2. Migrate the logical drive on array A to RAID 1.

3. extend the logical drives to include the unused space in the arrays

4. extend the partitions to use the new space on the logical drive.

ACU (2.90) and 5i/disk firmware are pretty old but I successfully did step 1 on the old firmware/software (lucky me!). Step 1 took about a day and half for the machine to redistribute the bytes. Now I am going to update all firmware and ACU before doing 2,3,4.

Currently array A shows the old 36G RAID 0, plus 36G unused space (I think now it is truely RAID 0 with half of the bytes on the new disk). B shows the old RAID 5 72G plus unused space 48G.

Question about step 2: when I migrate RAID 0 to RAID 1, is it going to use the unused space in the array to mirror the logical drive? What concerns me is that ACU is not smart and gives non-sense choice. I click migrate, it gives me RAID 0, 1+0 and 5 to choose. 5 obviously is not an option but it is there. Is ACU smart enough to do the job? My ACU is 2.90. The newer ACU is able to give only choices that conditions permit?

Step 3. Can I repliably extend the logical drives with all new firmware/ACU? I heard ACU with issues extending Win2K logical drives.

Step 4. I know M$ diskpart can extend partitions on RAID 5 since they are data only. For sys C: can I extend it with partition magic off line (boot to a floppy)? I really want to make C: bigger.

Any comments about the steps I am going to do? It is a production srever I don't want to mess it up.

Thanks.