Adding drives to existing Raid 5 array

[Stephan Cherry]

Can you add an extending drive while the server is active (during business hours)?

Also, what does it mean if the unallocated space is given another drive letter instead of showing at the end of drive D:?

I would appreciate any advice on this matter.

Thanks.

Stephan Cherry

[sandeep_raman]

Hello Stephan,

1.Can you add an extending drive while the server is active (during business hours)?

Yes,a hot-plug disk can be added to an existing raid.One important thing to consider is the logical volume in the array should not a be a system volume since you cannot extend a sys volume.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590/en-us

2.Also, what does it mean if the unallocated space is given another drive letter instead of showing at the end of drive D:?

It means the unused disk was not added/extended to the existing volume.

If these are true,

a.Hardware raid using smart array controller
b.Raid 5 array/logical volume does'nt have OS installed on it

then try,

1.Add the new disk to existing array(Array A/B).

2.Add the additional storage to the existing logical volume(Volume A/B).

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00687518/c00687518.pdf
Pg 5-7

3.Use diskpart utility to extend the data volume(i suppose its D:\ in your case).Also be aware C:\ can't be extended via diskpart.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590/en-us

SRH