dynamic disks--hardware raid--still confused

[Rubin Farr]

Okay,

I've read article after article, even correctly answered 70-210 questions on
it...

Scenario

We use Proliant servers with hardware raid 5...1 logical drive, C and E
partition. What do I do so that if necessary, I can add a drive to the
array, and make the E drive bigger? Expand, extend, basic disks...cant keep
them straight.

From what I understand, if you upgrade a basic disk to dynamic it cant be
extended. If I have a logical RAID hardware drive, and create c and E
partitions, it seems like I can never extend it.

I called HP and they said not to create dynamic disks at all--you basically
have a big chunk at the get go and then divvy it up down the road. If you
expand the hardware raid, you will not be able to use the extra space with
dynamic disks.

 

[Jeff Patterson [MSFT]]

Rubin,

Leave the disk as basic and use the Diskpart utility to extend the E:
partition:

325590 How to Use Diskpart.exe to Extend a Data Volume
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=325590

Jeff Patterson
Microsoft Support

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confers no rights.
Please reply to the newsgroup so that others may benefit.

 

[Rubin Farr]

Jeff--thanks a million! Will give this a shot.

I am curious, though, about when and where you would want to use dynamic
disks. From what I have read, you can extend on the fly, but I'm not sure in
what context this would be possible? Would dynamic disks apply more to
software raid?

I have read quite a few MS and 3rd party articles on the subject. I
apologize for my ignorance--i guess this is a concept that just is not
sinking into my skull...