Raid 5 Drive Setup

[donkc1]

Hi,
I have a server that has the OS drives mirrored Raid1. It has 3 additional drives setup as Raid5. These 3 drives are 72GB. The system was up, and running fine when I did this. I replaced each drive 1 at a time with 146GB drives, and let each 1 rebuild before I replaced the next. All 3 drives have been replaced, and the system is running fine, but it only sees those drives as 136GB (72 x 2) in disc management. Is there a way that I can have it see the additional space without having to redo the raid5 setup on the controller itself? I relize that I would have to allocate the additional space, but at the moment I can't see it. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Don

 

[colem]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe that partitions/drives larger than 137 GB require Windows 2000 SP3 or higher,XP SP1 or higher, or an ATA 133 card...



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[dearingkr]

When you replace a drive on a RAID-5 and then rebuild, the system will only use exactly what it used before...72Gb.

My advice:
Back up the entire RAID
Re-create the RAID the way you want it.
Restore your data to the new RAID

MCSE CCNA CCDA

 

[colem]

donk,
Go into disk manager.
If you cannot see the additional unallocated space on the new physical disks, refer to my first response.

The more I learn, the more I know I don't know enough.
<order>chicken w/garlic sauce combo</order>
For those about to rock, we salute you.
NO DISASSEMBLE!

 

[NickFerrar]

As dearingkr says even though you have more physical disk space the RAID-5 container itself will still have the same settings as when it was sitting on the smaller disks. Your RAID-controller management software should allow you to increase the size of a RAID-5 container though (without losing data) although personally I've only ever done this when adding more physical disks into the container, not by replacing all the disks with larger ones.