Guest Farhan Posted September 29, 2007 Posted September 29, 2007 Hello, I have a SBS 2003 file server with a 3 disk Raid 5 setup for files. I'm starting to run fairly low on disk space and wanted to look into replacing the drives with bigger capacity ones. Currently they are 3 36GB 10,000 RPM Drives. Can any one suggest a procedure i should follow in replacing the drives? I haven't done this sort of thing before and would appreciate any help & tips. Regards.
Guest Meinolf Weber Posted September 29, 2007 Posted September 29, 2007 Re: Raid 5 Expansion - Help Hello Farhan, If you have enough slots in the server, i just would add the new disks also to the machine. Best regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. > Hello, > > I have a SBS 2003 file server with a 3 disk Raid 5 setup for files. > I'm starting to run fairly low on disk space and wanted to look into > replacing the drives with bigger capacity ones. Currently they are 3 > 36GB 10,000 RPM Drives. > > Can any one suggest a procedure i should follow in replacing the > drives? I haven't done this sort of thing before and would appreciate > any help & tips. > > Regards. >
Guest Joshua Bolton Posted September 29, 2007 Posted September 29, 2007 Re: Raid 5 Expansion - Help Gee Meinolf Weber have you ever worked with raid? Farhan you don't state if this is hardware or software raid. Big difference between the two. If this is software raid your ONLY option is as follows: Back everything up - twice and test that the backups are good. Replace the three drives with the larger ones. Reinstall the Server OS from scratch and create your raid array Restore from backup for everything. You always have the option of putting the old drives back if things go gunnybags but make sure you mark then so they go back in EXACTLY the same order. If software I would highly recommend you just add two larger disks and mirror them. Move data or even reinstall software to this mirror set. This way you don't have to redo the OS and you gain storage which is transparent to users on the network. There is also less risk of screwing everything up. If this is hardware raid and you have a SMART RAID CONTROLLER review the documents for this controller so that you can dynamically expand your raid5 set into the additional disk(s). If you can dynamically expand the next issue is this additional disk space will appear in Disk Management as unformatted space. It will not automatically be added to the original used disk space. You can not add it via the OS to the system/boot partitions. If you have a data partition DO NOT create a volume set or "span" to this additional disk space. This creats a non fault tolerant file system on a fault tolerant array. Proper method is to backup the data, delete the partition and then create a new one that includes the new space. Then restore your data. If you raid controller does not support dynamic expansion you are back at the same routine as with software. Replace the drives with larger ones and reinstall. Restore from backup.
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