New Disc into RAID on NetServer LC2000

[James Mitchell_1]

Hi,

I have a NetServer LC2000 with 3 9GB SCSI Discs running RAID5. I have been supplied with a 36GB disc to add to the array for extra space. The existing discs have a 9GB partition for the D: drive.

Is it possible to add the new disc into the array, using the extra space for the D partition without having to loose my data?

I have tried doing this in the NetRAID Express Tools but it wanted me to initialize the discs thus loosing my data!

Appologies for sketchy details, thanks in advance for any replies.

PLEASE HELP as my disc is 98% full!!!

[kris rombauts]

Hi James,

the combination of the 36 Gbyte additional disk is not a ideal situation if you want to extend your second drive letter D: (i assume you have a 9 Gbyte C: and 9 Gbyte D: right ?)

If you add the 36 GByte disk to the 3* 9 Gbyte raid5 then you will end up with only 9 GByte new usable space and not 36 Gbyte so a waste of 27 Gbyte really). Only thing it offers you is raid 5 protection.

What you could do is add the 36 Gbyte and create a second array (A1) in RAID0 (no protection) and as such have a 36 Gbyte disk available to the Windows OS, this can be done online with Netraid Assistant.
You could then make this new drive your D: drive and copy the data from the old D: disk to the new one.

Later on if you are able to get hold of i.e. a second 36 Gbyte disk you can convert the RAID 0 into a RAID1 so you have some hardware RAID protection again.

If you still want to include the 36 Gbyte disk into the 3* 9 raid5 array (again this is not a ideal situation), you can and the RAID stripe will be spread from 3 disk to 4 disks.
If your Netraid has it's Virtual Sizing setting enabled (in Express Tools) then you could use the additional 9 GByte new space and add it to the already existing D: drive you have available now but this feature only works if you have one logical drive in the array, not sure how your array A0 is configured (one or two logical drives within the A0 array).

For more on this pls see the manual on URL: page 11
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/lpn11577/lpn11577.pdf

See also here to understand waste of the capacity byb mixing different capacity in the same array:

http://h20015.www2.hp.com/en/document.jhtml?lc=en&docName=lpn14582


HTH

Kris

[James Mitchell_1]

Hi Kris,

Thankyou for your reply. I had realised that you can't spread data equaly across 4 discs without wasting space if one has a larger capacity. Unfortunately our IT support company who should know what they are doing and know our existing setup didn't! I will be having words! They also wanted to charge me ??650 for installing this disc, hence why i'm doing it myself!

Anyway now I have it I may as well use it. I looked at the links you provided and found them very useful. It looks like I will have to enable virtual sizing on my existing logical drive (A0 this is the only one) and use the online expansion process under NT. It is not enabled at present. It looks like quite a complicated process. Plus to make matters worse it must go on to the same drive letter D:

My OS and data are both on the existing single array, OS on C: partition, Data on D: I would like to add the new disc as a seperate array but I must have data redundancy. I also need fast read/write speeds as large amounts of data are copied regularly.

So I must add this new disc to the existing array. Any hints or tips before I go ahead would be greatly appriciated! Or if you think there is any reason why it wont work with my setup, please let me know.

Thank you again

James