Add another Drive to TC3100

[CA1040065]

Hi, I have a TC3100 running MS Small Business Server 2000 with an 18GB hot swap drive. We are running out of room so i would like to add an additional 18GB hot swap drive to give us 36GB. Could you tell me if there is anything i should know before doing so? I was going to shut down the machine, stick in the additional drive and start it up. Will Microsoft SBS 2000 recognize it and format it? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Greg.

[Alicia White]

The answer to that questions depends on which hard drive controller are you using. Are you using the onboard SCSI controller? Or, are you using a RAID controller?

If you are using the SCSI controller, Windows should recognize the additional drive as a new, unformatted hard drive. You can then format the hard drive using Windows.

If you are using a RAID controller, Windows will not see the new drive until it has been configured as part of a RAID array on the RAID controller (either add it to an existing array or create a new RAID0 array with the single drive).

If you add the drive to an existing array, Windows will see that drive as additional free space on your existing virtual drive. Windows will not let you add that space to the primary, boot partition. The only way you can use that additional space on the virtual drive is to create a new partition. If you use it to add a RAID0 array, then Windows will see that additional space as a new, unformatted hard drive.

Configuring that additional drive as a RAID0 array has little to recommend it, however. RAID0 arrays provide no redundancy. The only benefit is that it would provide faster access to data than a RAID5 array would. So, if redundancy isn't an issue, RAID0 might be the way to go.

Alicia

[e4services]

Greg, Don't know if you will get this after a year but...
We have a customer that has done what you did. For some reason SBS started generating errors in the log about SCSI errors once the new drive was installed. Very strange. He hadn't even added the space to Windows yets, it was unformated space. How did your addition go?