RAID "Upgrade" on T410

Good morning,

You may be able to "image" your current setup, and then replace the drives with the larger ones, but this method is not supported by Dell.  Some customers have used this process successfully.

Dell's supported method is to back up your data,  replace the drives, recreate the array and reinstall the OS and updates, then restore the data.

Regards,

Geoff ... where did your post go??

When you say "copied all the data across", do you mean you actually copied/cloned the contents of one to the other, or do you mean you allowed the RAID controller to "rebuild" the disk into the RAID 1, replicating the disk that way?

There are two things you can do to accomplish this:

1. As Geoff said, you can backup/image the data, replace the disks with the larger ones, configure RAID 1 with larger disks, then restore your data to it.

2. Replace the disks one at a time, allowing the first to rebuild before replacing the second.  The problem with this is that your original array will remain 500GB, meaning that the only thing you can do with the new 1500GB space is create a second RAID 1, which will appear to the OS as a new and separate disk (meaning its space cannot be merged with that of the existing "disk" and partitions).  There is something called a retag that will appear to make your 500GB VD a 2000GB VD, but do not be seduced by this simple-seeming method - it should be used only for recovery and not for "expanding" a VD, as it will cause it to become unstable.

So, if you are ok with two VD's (two "disks" in the OS), whose space need not be unified, then you can do number 2, but if you need the space to be a single "disk", then number 1 is the best way to go.

Which RAID controller are you using?  Not all controllers support "slicing" (multiple VD's across a single disk set).

Hi guys,

Managed to get it all sorted. What we did was remove one of the 500GB and inset the 2TB and let it rebuild onto the 2TB and expanded the partition to the full 2TB.

Then we removed the "500GB" array which was on the 2TB, recreated it with only one drive in - got it booted up into Windows and then popped the other 2TB drive in and all is working well. :D

Thanks guys!

I'm not sure I follow what you did, but it sounds like you did a retag to turn your 500GB VD into a 2TB VD.

Which controller do you have?

Perhaps ... Not sure if that is what it is called.

Where can I check to see which RAID controller the server has?

If you have OpenManage installed, it will provide the information on the controller and array.  Otherwise, you can watch the server as it POST's  and it will provide the information as well.  

Regards,