Using Dynamic Disks

[acl03]

We have two old file servers. They are limited to 2 Terabyte logical drives. One is a mirror of the other. It is MUCH mroe convenient if the logical drives in windows are the same size (as opposed to a large drive on the source, and 4 small drives on the target).

We recently bought a new primary 10TB file server that has no 2TB limit. My plan is to set up one large 8TB drive on the source.

I will combine the disks from the old 2 servers to make four 2-TB drives on one of the servers. Then I will convert them to dynamic disks in windows 2003 storage server (HP) and make an 8TB spanned drive.

I've never used dynamic disks or windows-based raid (or spanned) drives. Is this OK to do? Anything I should be concerned about? Thanks.

Thanks,
Andrew

Hard work often pays off over time, but procrastination pays off right now!

 

[fugtruck]

Anytime I've converted a basic disk to dynamic, it went without so much as a hiccup. But I recommend not having a single volume that large for the reason that if you ever have to do a file system check, you will have hours of down time.

 

[technome]

I would not recommend Dynamic disks in any form. The newer hardware raid cards have extended error check built in, as in an example the LSI based cards have "patrol reads", which automatically or scheduled, checks the entire disk platter surfaces for physical defects. Normal, non raid error checking only checks the ability to read data from sectors containing data. The issue with very large volumes ( or any array setup with a very large number of sectors) is errors build up in areas where data does not reside, and only become an issue during a rebuild (or possibly large movements of data); a few multiple errors found during a rebuild causes most catastrophic array failures as multiple errors found in a sort period of time trigger a raid failure, admittedly parity raids are more prone to this type failure.
Do not confuse patro reads with a "consistency check" as a CC only checks the disks' surface which contain data, CC error checking is not sufficient for large volumes.
Also I hope these are SAS, otherwise when a drive fails and is replaced, your rebuilds will take days, not hours.

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