We have a Dell 2650 with Raid 5 17GB and just purchased upgraded hard drives and want to transfer over. I've heard you just have to do a rebuild of all the data onto the new hard drives. But my question is that can i Just switch out one of the harddrives, let it write to that drive. Then replace that drive into raid 0, and the other drives into the slots and let the first drive write to them all? If you need more explanation, please tell me and i'll get more info and in depth on what i want to do.
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Converting to larger Harddrive
- Thread starter Crowebird
- Start date
I'm confused as to why you're mentioning RAID0 in conjunction with your RAID5, but I'll answer the question I THINK you were trying to ask:
In theory, you can simply fail and replace the drives one at a time--i.e. fail drive 1, replace, let it rebuild, fail drive 2, replace, let it rebuild, etc--however, the size of your array will not change. It will still be 36GB (I'm guessing, based on a 3 drive RAID 5 with 18GB drives.)
The correct way to do what you want to accomplish is what you assume it to be: make good backups, pull the old drives, install and create an array out of the new drives, and rebuild the server.
In theory, you can simply fail and replace the drives one at a time--i.e. fail drive 1, replace, let it rebuild, fail drive 2, replace, let it rebuild, etc--however, the size of your array will not change. It will still be 36GB (I'm guessing, based on a 3 drive RAID 5 with 18GB drives.)
The correct way to do what you want to accomplish is what you assume it to be: make good backups, pull the old drives, install and create an array out of the new drives, and rebuild the server.
- Thread starter
- #3
Sorry about not getting back with the reply. But i stated the Raid0 wrong, meant to say hard drive 1. Still had my mind on raid when i was typing that.
The theory you talked about is what i was trying to get around. I didn't want to have to rebuild the whole raid if i didn't have to. But from what you stated, i will have to do that to get a good build out of the server. Just didn't want to take up a whole day of my weekend to get it done. Can't really do it during the week because of people connecting via RDC to the server. Thanks for the quick reply also.
Anything that i should look out for when i do this rebuild? Never rebuilt a server from scratch and transferred data back over. Usually i've just made the server from scratch and didn't have any data to transfer over. I have veritas backup as my backup data. Thanks for the help in advance
The theory you talked about is what i was trying to get around. I didn't want to have to rebuild the whole raid if i didn't have to. But from what you stated, i will have to do that to get a good build out of the server. Just didn't want to take up a whole day of my weekend to get it done. Can't really do it during the week because of people connecting via RDC to the server. Thanks for the quick reply also.
Anything that i should look out for when i do this rebuild? Never rebuilt a server from scratch and transferred data back over. Usually i've just made the server from scratch and didn't have any data to transfer over. I have veritas backup as my backup data. Thanks for the help in advance
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