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June 15th, 2011 03:00
Expand RAID1 array on PERC 4/SC
Hi,
I have an old Poweredge 1600SC server with 4 physical disks: 136GB x 4. These are configured as 2 RAID 1 Arrays. The controller can only accomate 4 physical disks.
I have 2 new 300GB disks that I want to swap out for 2 of the existing 136GB disks. The Array I want to replace is not the System drive.
The question is, would it be OK to replace one of the 136GB disks in the array with a 300GB , allow the array to rebuild, then replace the other 136GB with the other 300GB then allow the array to rebuild again. Would I then be able to expand the partition to use the new disk space?
Thanks,
Ben
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Dev Mgr
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June 15th, 2011 07:00
There are mixed reports on this. The general opinion is that you won't be able to use the whole 300GB; at best you could create a 2nd virtual disk on the free space. Some say that with OpenManage you could reconfigure the raid 1 and tell it to grow and use the whole 300GB. I haven't tried this and some say it wouldn't allow it for them.
The guaranteed way is to back up your 2nd raid-1, delete the raid 1, swap the drives out for the 300's, create a new raid 1 and restore your data.
theflash1932
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June 16th, 2011 10:00
As Dev Mgr pointed out, the best method (if you must use the full 300GB as part of the same array) is to backup, create new/larger array with 300GB drives, then restore.
If you replace the drives with larger drives and allow each to rebuild, your array will be the same size, and your only option at that point would be to create a second array across the disks, which will create a new/separate "disk" in Windows to partition. As it will appear physically separate from the other "disk" (array), you will not be able to join that disk space with the original disk space in any way.
The PERC's do not support expansion of the array (automatically or manually) to fill the new/larger space on the disks. You may see a method if you look hard enough that will give you the illusion of expanding the array, but it is only an illusion ... it will seem to work, but it will create an unstable array, making it only a matter of time (sometimes minutes, sometimes weeks or months) before it fails catastrophically. This method (called a retag, where you delete the array and recreate it without initializing the array) was designed as a recovery tool and not an "expansion" tool. It's side-affect is that the array appears to be expanded, but this is dangerous, at best.