Adding to RAID 1

[Alan Zak]

Hello, a friend of mine has an HP NetServer LD Pro at her office, which currently has RAID 1 (mirroring) with two (2) 4-gig ultra SCSI hot-swap drives.

The operating system in use is Novell NetWare 4.11.

They're running out of disk space, so I'm trying to help them boost the space available by replacing the 4-gig drives with a mirrored 9.1-gig set instead.

To do this, I'm guessing I need to:

1. Remove one of the existing 4-gig drives, and replace it with a 9.1-gig drive.

2. Through the OS (the RAID is controlled by the OS), allow the OS to rebuild a mirror image of the 4-gig drive onto the 9.1-gig drive.

3. Replace the remaining 4-gig drive with the second 9.1-gig drive.

4. Once again have the drives synchronize to recreate the mirror.

Can anyone offer me any tips about doing this, either specific to NetWare 4.11 or in general? Many thanks. :)

[Brian Peters]

Hello Alan,

First thing is to make a good backup. Your idea will work, but you will end up with 2 logical drives. LD0 will be the orginal 4gb.
Then you can create another logical drive with the remainer free space.

If you want all of the space as one logical drive then you will need to clear the config and reconfigure the array will the 9gb hdds and then restore from backup.

Good luck!!

[Alan Zak]

Hi Brian, thanks much for your reply!

Would it be possible, after installing the first 9-gig drive and getting it sync'd with one of the original 4-gig drives, to use a utility like Partition Magic to completely utilize the 9-gig? Then install the other 9-gig and recreate the mirror so that the system will sync as a full 9-gig drive?

[Brian Peters]

Good question!

I have never tried it, but I don't think that it will work. The problem is that the netraid controller determines the configuration (including the size, stripe depth and other properties) of the logical drive. Partition magic will be unable to change that configuration. I imagine that it will have no clue that it is physically a 9gb hdd. It will probably see it as a 4gb hdd.

Remember when you create a logical drive on the netraid the fools the NOS and other utilities to think that it is 1 physical hdd.

This is my opinion anyway, I have never tried it.

[Brian Peters]

Hello Alan,

Scratch my last post!!! I forgot that you are not using a raid controller. Sorry.

To answer your question again...

I think that it may work!?! Not 100% sure. I can't think of anything that will prevent it from working. I really like your idea!

Make sure that you have a backup!!!

Have fun!