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trotter1948

11 Posts

17507

October 9th, 2007 15:00

Raid 1 on SAS 5/iR

I have a PE 840 with SAS 5/iR raid controller. I also have 2 * 80gb Hot swap drives plus 2 * 500gb hot swap drives all in same backplane.. Can i set up 2 arrays 1/. 2 * 80 raid 1 for operating system 2/. 2 * 500 raid 1 for storage If so how do I do it ? Operataing system to be installed is SBS 2003 R2 Premium

Message Edited by trotter1948 on 10-09-2007 11:12 AM

at5147

884 Posts

October 9th, 2007 22:00

You can have two RAID 1s, not a problem. I would recommend reading "Performing Configuration Tasks"  <ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell> on the online manual for more information about setting up the RAID arrays. On that same page, there is more information about the SAS 5/iR BIOS <ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell> .

trotter1948

11 Posts

October 10th, 2007 10:00

Thank you Most helpful regrads Terry

megbergen

11 Posts

October 18th, 2007 15:00

I was double checking if you did this, and if it worked ok. I've been studying how to add hard drives to our poweredge 1900 with 2 existing Raid 1 drives, and talked to three different Dell service people, and not one of them mentioned this as an option. I've bought 2 new 500 gb sata-2 drives, and I was planning on attempting to connect them to the existing on-board controllers (which I've been told may or may not work) and keep my existing raid 1 drives on the sas5ir for my operating system, but if just adding a new raid 1 array to my existing sas5ir controller is an option, then this certainly seems to be the simplest solution if I want to have the raid 1 on the new drives as well. I was told by Dell tech support that the only way I could use 4 drives on the sas5ir controller was to change them to raid 0, which I do not want to do - so if what you asked about is an option it is certainly more simple sounding and less expensive than all the other options I was told I may have by tech support. I'm just waiting for a time I can get into the office when no one is working on the computers to see if this works or not. Meg

trotter1948

11 Posts

October 18th, 2007 17:00

It can be done.
I set up an initial array using the 2 80gb drives in RAID 1 mirrors..
You then have to exit the setup and go in again and add an array for the 2nd time
thse unused drives are there and you can select them as I did with the 2 500 gb drives as a 2nd array for storage.
I since deleted the arrays and setup the 2 80gb drives during setting up Windows SBS 2003.
 
I then went into the array firmware and setup the 2 500gb as 2nd array for storage.
 
Seems very simple really..
All on one SAS 5/ir
Hope this helps
 
 

megbergen

11 Posts

October 18th, 2007 18:00

Thank you - I think that I will go ahead and do it then. I'll leave my existing Small Business Server 2003 & exchange server on the exist Raid 1 pair of 250 GB drives, and do an additional Raid 1 array on my two new 500 GB drives for the data. What you did sounds similar to my setup. I'm glad to see someone has done this and it worked. It's maddening though all the different answers I got from contacting tech support. Crossing my fingers that this will work without messing up any of my data - though I have a backup on a external hard drive just in case. I'm going to come in early and try this tomorrow morning. Meg

trotter1948

11 Posts

October 18th, 2007 18:00

The new array shouldnt touch the existing array or data as they are logically and physically  independant.
 
It is also possible to create more than one array on a pair of physical drives.
In theory that should also be safe to any existing arrays as the controller only accesses unallocated drive space..
 
best of luck...

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