Problem adding disk in RAID5

[Laurent_3]

Here is the situation:
I'm having an Lpr server equiped with a NetRAID 3si / 16MB. the 1st channel is handling a RAID1 with 2 disks (these are the system disk), the 2nd channel is connected to a RackStorage (NetStorage 12) containing 5 disks of 18GB in RAID5.
I've add 3 disks in the RAID5, the NetRAID assistant is then giving the good figures showing that all disks are part of the RAID5 set BUT in the system (which is W2K) I still see the old amount of GB I was having and it's not showing me any extended partition.

Did someone had the same problem before?

Any ideas are welcome????????

[Dries Bertier]

Have You tried a reboot of your server yet ? Did you add the capacity to the volume you want using disk administrator ??

Dries

[Laurent_3]

Yes I've tried the reboot of the server, I've even restarted the NetStorage but it did not help.
I did not add the capacity because when I look under disk management It is not showing the extended capacity. For W2K everything seems the same as before adding the new disks.


The Event viewer is also generating a lot of:

"dmio: Harddisk1 write error at block 248942848 due to disk removal"

and sometime
"Cannot grow LUN Harddisk1: Write of new disk headers failed"

[Steve Lithgow]

Hi.. Is the raid 5 array ONE logical disk ?? If not.. you cannot grow it.. 3si only supports growing if there is only 1 logical disk in the array.

see here:

http://netserver.hp.com/docs/download.asp?file=netrdusergd.pdf

Look under "Expanding Capacity" read it THOROUGHLY to make sure you don't destroy your existing data...

[Laurent_3]

the 3Si card is configured like this:
Ch0 LD0 2*18.2GB in RAID1
Ch1 LD1 8*18.2GB in RAID5

Does that mean I'm a good candidat to reinstall the server and restore the data to have the expanded capacity available

[Steve Lithgow]

No... it looks fine from here.. Are you using NT or Win2k ??

Did you enable virtual sizing when you first installed and configured the array ??

Have a look at the instructions in my previous post. .I think they may help you to determine what your best options are for expanding...

[Laurent_3]

I'm using W2K and Virtual sizing is not enabled.
Another thing I did not mentionned is that the driver of the 3Si is a Microsoft driver. I've called an engineer from HP and he is saying that the problem is coming from that.
Do you by any chance know a procedure on how to change the NetRAID driver without reinstalling the system?

[Theo Hill_1]

You should be able to remove the driver, then add the new one within the SCSI section in the control panel. Make sure you do not reboot after removing. Remove the old, then add the correct driver, then reboot.

[Dries Bertier]

You can use the update driver button to select the other driver from HP.

Dries

[Theo Hill_1]

using the update driver, is not the best method to putting in a new driver. I would recommend removing the old and adding the new driver. updating sometimes leaves old driver bits in the system.

[Hien Pham Tu]

are you using "basic disk" or "dynamic disk" in w2k? if you use "dynamic disk", w2k can not see more space when you expand your "logical disk" in netraid because w2k stores disk configuration of "dynamic disk" at the end of disk( contrast with "basic disk" w2k stores disk configuration in partition table at the begin of disk). Also you can not use virtual size feature of netraid with "dynamic disk" in w2k.
in case you use "dynamic disk" and you add more hdd to netraid, you can use netraid to create new (not expand old "logical disk") "logical disk" and then in w2k, you set new "logical disk" to "dynamic disk" and then expand volumes inside of "dynamic disk".

[Bob Bell_1]

If this is truly a driver issue. If this were an NT40 machine and you knew your setup well enough, and are brave.. this is what I would do.. but remember, I am not sane.. I will try alot of things. In NT40 you could do a Recover process (only selecting System Files) and supply the correct Storage Drivers (HP) for the controllers (internal scsi and netraid). Then reapply SP's.. (keeping the OEM drivers).. ERD ERD ERD.. Never have done this in 2000 so....

[jisoo]

I'm experiencing the same problem as Laurent.
I have Lpr server with NetRaid 1si. It is
connected to Rack12 with three 9GB disks in Raid5. I've added 3 more
disks in the RAID5 and the NetRAID Assistant reports that all disks are
part of one logical drive configured as Raid5 just as I expected. But
the Disk Management (W2K) still displays the original size with no
traces of the newly added disks even after rebooting the server. FYI, the disk is in dynamic mode. I also get the following errors in the Event Viewer:
"dmio: Harddisk1 write
error at block 88850449 due to disk removal"
"Cannot grow LUN Harddisk0:
Write of new disk headers failed"
"Cannot grow LUN Harddisk0: Config
copy write failed"
"Disk group ServerNameDg0: Errors in some
configuration copies: Disk Harddisk0, copy1:Block 0:Disk read failure"

I contacted HP techsupport 6 times on this issue and they couldn't find any resolution for me. I'm using the most current driver and firmware for the NetRaid 1si and virtual sizing is disabled.

[Theo Hill_1]

If the disk is not the system discs (where the OS is installed) then there shouldn't be a problem, if and only if you didn't convert the disc from a normal disc to a dynamic disc. If it was configured as a dynamic disc at the initial setup, you should be able to add capacity to the LD and it should show within the OS.