PERC 4e/Di Raid controller question

[Frankenherder]

I am not overly familiar with Dell RAID controllers.

I inherited 2 RAID setups. Bay 0 has 2x36 GB drives mirrored and Bay 1 has 3x36 GB drives.

The problem is my D drive is running out of space and is Bay1. Can I simply add a new HD to the empty slot, add it to the bay array and have it dynamically join the RAID 5 configuration and not harm any of the data? Or should I ghost the config, blow it away, and recreate the new array with the 4 drives the restore the ghost image??

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks
Matt

 

[LawnBoy]

Play it safe. Ghost it and then reconstruct. Remember, they're paying you to be paranoid.

 

[NickFerrar]

You can extend RAID 5 array's easy enough through Dell OpenManage, after that you then have to extend the Windows partition so it uses the new space. Microsoft's diskpart tool can do this for non system volumes however last time I ran it I hadto uninstall OpenManage before it would work (I guess related to Array Manager replacing MS's disk management).

If you don't fancy MS's command line tool I can recommend Paragon's Partition Manager software. Basic version can extend volumes (inc. system ones). If you get the Enterprise version you can do a system image like Ghost to (we save them to USB hard drives). It runs in a pre-boot environment so no worries about locked system files. It's not cheap though and sounds like overkill for your needs.

 

[Frankenherder]

Thanks for ths tips. I usually run a full disk back up and ghost the partition before I go ahead.

I think I will try the Dell Open Manage to expand the array then diskpart to allocate the space. If this fails I will just blow away the raid config and restore the ghosted data to the larger array.

thanks for your help

Matt

 

[NickFerrar]

I'd expect the RAID extension (adding a single 36GB drive) to take 2-4 hours so make sure you get enough downtime signed off Diskpart only takes seconds to run though.