Configuring raid arrays

[Rex Hylton]

I inherited a Raid 0 setup from our previous admin.

Does anyone know of a 3rd party utility that will allow me to resize and re-assign partitions back to either a non-raid set-up or Raid 5?

TIA

[Greg Carlson]

Rex,

It isn't a matter of a utility to go from Raid 0 to Raid 5. It is a matter of size. Raid 0 has no redundancy and uses the space of all the hdds as one logical drive. To migrate to a Raid 5 you would need one more hdd to be added for room for the parity. Taking it to JBOD the SCSI controller will only recognize individual hdds and you would be at a restore from backup scenario. NetRaid Assistant is the utility you could use to migrate to RAID 5 from your Raid 0 if you added a hdd.
NetRaid Assistant is at the bottom: HP NetRAID Series Software for NT/Win2000/Win95/Win98

Ciao,
Greg

[Rex Hylton]

Doh - didn't think of that option. That would work out really nicely!

So potentially I could add 2 more hdds as I have 2 spare slots in my raid bay.


Forgive my ignorance but what is JBOD

[Chris Blumenshine]

You can only add two more disks if your array is capable of it. Most HP netraid cards will only allow 8 drives in an array.
JBOD = Just a Bunch Of Disks, or no array at all.

[Rex Hylton]

So just to clarify. At the moment I have Raid 0 (3x9gb scsi drives) set up as 5gb and 22gb partitions. I have a raid controller set up for 5 drives w/ 2 empty bays.

With the above utility will I be able to add 2 additional drives - 9gb storage as well as a parity drive? Or will I only be able to add the 1 additional drive for parity?

[Greg Carlson]

Rex,

You can add three hdd's if you have space in your drive cage. Basically to add one, two or three hdds would be the same procedure inside NetRaid assistant. You would highlight the phyiscal hdd's which would show in a ready state along with your logical drive. Then under logical drive from the tool bar menu choose Change Config-Add Capacity. Then change your Raid 0 to Raid 5..

Hope this makes sense.. You could add 1,2,3 hdd's and still do the same thing.. Adding 1 hdd adds NO extra capacity, only redundancy. Adding 2,3 hdds adds that much extra space to your logical drive. You would then need to claim the extra space in your NOS and format it.

Ciao,
Greg

[Rex Hylton]

Great answers chaps - may have to send one of the "magic bullets" in this post's direction.

I'll be ordering the extra drives w/in the next couple of weeks!