raid upgrade on NT 4 SP6A

[subspaceradio]

Is it possible to change a complete raid 5 set by progressivley changing each disk in turn (for a larger capacity disk) and then allowing time for the new disk to have data. Then at the end of the upgrades, will NT allow the expansion of the new disk set to take account of the increased disk space ?? How much time should be allowed for the 'blank' data disk to be written?
For information - 3 raided 18 Gb disks being 'upped' to 3 raided 36 G disks!

 

[tylan]

No, it doesn't work that way. You will end up with 3 (36GB) drives with only 18GB used on each drive. The drives partitions / raid tables will not change, the only advantange to doing that will be that the three drives will now be new.

The better way is to build your new raid 5, and then either move the data or restore from tape.

 

[subspaceradio]

Thanks for that. For information, what we did was follow that route anyway, and got 3*18 Gb useable. Then created a second partition using the spare 3*18 Gb areas, then used Partition Magic to merge the two areas. Seems to be okay so far !

 

[tylan]

Did Windows see that other 18GB partition, or only partition magic? Secondly, I thought that PM only worked on NON-Server OSes? When I looked before I thought they wanted you to buy a version that was like $700.