NetRaid

[Gengaveni]

Hi,

Is it possible to convert a raid 5 set consisting four hard disks to raid 5 with three hard disks without affecting the data.
One of my hd in the raid is failed and it will take atleast a month to get a replacemetn hd, until then I want to use the three other hard disks with reduntancy, without affecting my data and OS(windows 2000)

[CA845876]

Although some of the old AutoRAID products may have had this feature, I'm pretty sure that none of the NetRAIDs allow you to change a RAID set on the fly.

About the best you could do is make a backup, recreate the RAID-5 with only 3 disks, and restore the backup.

When your replacement disk comes in, you would have to do the same thing. However, if your data fits comfortably on 3 drives, why not just keep the 4th disk as a hot spare, or cold spare? Should another disk fail, you can then rebuild the array to the spare disk quickly.

I don't know what part of the world you're in, but if you're under warranty, a month to get a spare disk seems like too much time. Just my opinion.

[Alicia White]

While it is possible to add more drives to an existing RAID array, you can't reduce the number of drives in an existing array.

So, the short answer to your question is, unfortunately, no.

Your only option for reducing the number of drives in an existing RAID array is to:

1. backup the existing data; 2. test the backup to make sure it works;
3. delete the current configuration;
4. create a new RAID array using just three drives;
5. install the Operating System on the new array; and,
6. restore your data from backup.

Then, when the fourth arrives, you can either use it as a hotspare or you can add it to the existing array using NetRAID Assistant.

Good luck,

Alicia