Adding New Hard Drive

[Guest]

I would like to add a new hard drive to my server, where i currently have a
RAID 1 configuration with basic mirroring.

This is primarily to extend the size of the home drives for all users.

Is there a smart way of doing this, so that users don't notice the change
and the home drive simply grows, or do I have to reconfigure the server and
restore all filw to the new space from a backup.

 

[Gareth Brown]

Hi,

Is the mirror implelemented through hardware or software? Either way, you
can not expand a mirror, if implemented through hardware you might be able
to migrate the mirror to RAID 5 or 10 (if you have 2 HDDs). I'd advise
taking a full backup before you attempt this though. To get Windows to see
the extra space, you may then need to follow these steps so
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=325590

If implemented through Windows I don't believe there is anyway to do this.
So you will need to back the data up, destroy the mirror, add the extra disk
added create a RAID 5 volume (so you can use add extra storage and keep
redundancy) and restore the data.

The other thing to be aware of if you use RAID 5, is that there is a write
penatly when using RAID 5 (http://www.gtweb.net/RAID_desc.html) Which may
effect you depending on your setup and high heavily used the volume is.

Cheers

Gareth Brown | Consultant | 1E Ltd

www.1e.com