Adding a second hard drive

[JPWydman]

Hello all.

After looking through the forum and only finding issues similar to the one I am facing, I wanted to pose the question to you for assistance.

I am currently admining a NW5.0 server with 1 8GB HD. We are going to undertake the massive task of scanning in EVERY document/paper that we have recieved in the last year in an effort to get rid of the 8 FULL file cabinets we have. To facilitate this, I have purchased a 100GB HD that will be used for storage purposes. I have installed hard drives countless times on Windows boxes so I can't imagine it being that difficult. In fact, the Novell documentation I found here..

http://www.novell.com/documentation/lg/nw51/sdiskenu/data/hkbkhugn.html

Seems to indicate that it is, just that easy. My questions are...

Is the documentation I found @ Novell enough? Is it, just that easy? What suprises can I expect? Thank you for your assistance in advance.

Josh

 

[TheLad]

Should be easy as the documentation says. I do worry though, when I hear that people are only installing one disk - what would you do if that disk failed??

I always recommend RAID 1 (mirroring) at the very least. The cost of a couple of extra drives is always less than the time/effort/loss of work that is incurred if a disk fails in this configuration. How much would your company loose if your server was out for a day or two???

I hope you take good backups!! -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[JPWydman]

Thank you for your input.

We do a nightly backup of our crucial data (acounting, jobfiles) and a weekly backup of the entire system.

This new storage drive will not replace our existing drive, and will contain a full system backup of our primary drive as well as the data storage. So if something should happen, not only would we have our nightly backups, but our weekly and our storage drive to use for recovery. Had I set up this server originally I would have done just what you have recomended however the owner is happy with his setup and only wanted the extra space.

Once again, thank you for your assistance and advice.

 

[salserocito]

Its real easy to say that you can always go to tape backup if something goes wrong, but consider the other aspects...

1. The amount of Server downtime while having to rebuild the Server and THEN have to restore 100GB of data. We would have to be many, many hours to completely restore the server back to its original operation status.

2. The lost employee time because they can't get to their data.

3. Having to explain to Management why the server was down for so long. (I hate that part!)

You could elimate all of these headaches by taking TheLad's advise and go with RAID1 Mirrored drives, or even better, RAID5. Both options would allow your Server to continue to function in full production, EVEN IF there was a hard disk failure.

Whats the old saying...

"Pay me now or pay me later."

Just my $.02

Good Luck!

 

[rjs]

Don't forget about memory on the server! NetWare needs memory for caching or performance suffers.

 

[JPWydman]

We have 512mb currently. Thank you for the reminder.

Josh