Add new drive to RAID 5 w/ Win2000 Server questions

[rb74]

Hi all,

I am a developer, not to familiar with server administration, but have been given this task. Our server is a Proliant ML370 with three hard drives in a RAID5 setup. (please pardon me if my terminology is not accurate) In Windows, it is showing our hard drive capacity to be under 1GB, so we recently purchased a new drive and inserted it into an available slot. I went into the ACU to expand the array, and I think it proceeded correctly. Now what I have under the array in the ACU is the logical drive 1 with the capacity of the original 3 drives (34.719 GB) and also now a portion titled "Unused space" with a size of 23.151 GB. I know this is the new drive that I added. I also am using the Compaq Insight manager and it now lists the new drive as being configured after I performed the array expansion. While in the insight manager, I pulled up the logical drive status, and it lists the capacity at 34.719 GB, but lists all four physical drives. In the physical drive area, when I pull up the configuration, it lists the new drive as falling under the same logical drive.

I don't know which step to take next, but I need to know what step to take to make the logical drive include the new drive in it's capacity. Can anyone help or offer advice?


Thanks in advance,

Rob

 

[FunkDoobious]

You can use the unused space to create another drive or you can use third party software (partition magic, volume manager etc) to expand your existing volume.

 

[Trackhappy]

If you happen to be running W2K, you can easily expand the volume onto unallocated space under Disk management. Fraid I can't remember NT4. No doubt someone else still has it around.

 

[rodrevelation]

rb74,

With Windows 2000, you will need to convert the drive to a dynamic disk under the disk administrator (by default it is set up as a basic disk). Once you have it converted to dynamic disk, you can then change the allocation of the available disk space to match what is available with the drive array. Hope this helps...

 

[technome]

Sorry for crashing the party, but I suggest you read this thread, and it's referenced threads, FunkDoobios is on the mark...

http://x220.minasi.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1846

Expanding a volume is not that simple without a 3rd party utility, the array must be be a Dynamic disk before any volumes are created. Converting your disk to Dynamic after Windows is installed won't do it. Best you can hope for, without an original Dynamic disk or 3rd party utility is more space to create an additional volume

Probably the easist and safest- place you "system" on an array set other than your data array set, creating the data volume after Windows 2000 is installed.

This is one area Micrsoft should seriously address, along with a failsafe system restore mechanism.