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Adding Space to a Windows 2000 Server

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am running a Win2000 Server with 2 18G (~17,000 MB) mirrored hard drives.

The server see it as one 18G logical drive under an Array.

This logical drive was partitioned into 2. One with 5000MB used for the OS. One is 12000MB used for MS Exchange (about 5 GB) and File servers (about 6 GB). And as you can imagine, I am running out of spaces.

Recently, I bought another 2 18G hard drive and installed them into the Server. But before doing any configuration with these 2 new physical drives, I would like to ask your advices and suggestions.

Should I put these 2 new drives into the same logical drive that I have right now and extend the space for the current 2 partition?
Or I should create a new logical drive with the new one under the same Array and create a new partition?
Or I should create an new array with a new logical drive with a new partition?

What is your recommandations?

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I am in the same situation only with bigger drives and using RAID5. I am going to add my new disks to the same logical drive and expand the existing partitions. In your case, I might do a little of both, moving either the file server or exchange into its own partition.

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>Should I put these 2 new drives into the same >logical drive that I have right now and extend >the space for the current 2 partition?

This is a mirror and as mirror is defined as 2 drives I don’t think you can do this

>Or I should create a new logical drive with the >new one under the same Array and create a new >partition?

Again, this is a mirror and as mirror is defined as 2 drives I don’t think you can do this.

>Or I should create an new array with a new >logical drive with a new partition?

This is the only viable choice of the options you have provided. However, personally, if you can afford to do it, buy another 18Gb drive and set it up as a raid 5. More drive space for your money, more speed and similar levels of fault tolerance.

Hope this helps
Howie

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If I bought another 18G hard drive to create a RAID5, will I enable to add another 18G to the same RAID5 later on (so there will be 4 18G hard drives in the RAID5)?

Do you think 5G for the OS partition is enough?

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If it was me I would first do a total backup.

Install the new drives as a mirrored array and move the file server to the new array as a single 18gig partition.

If you had the existing array partitioned for Exchange (5gig) and the File Servers (6gig), merge the partition to a single 12gig drive.

This will give you the space and redundancy you need.

Lee

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I may do this if I was installing a new server. Your recommandation is great but it will increase the chance of data loss.

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wlbowers:
Why RAID1 instead of RAID5?
Which one is more difficult to restore in case of hardware failure?

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here’s what we did. We used Hardware RAID [Promise] and used 2 20GB identical Maxtor IDE HDDs mirrored for the DC’s. We use SCSI striped hotswappable drives for terminal services, Exchange. We use Hardware RAID [Promise SATA sriped] for file servers. We don’t partition out any RAID arrays either mirrored or striped. To much admin and documentation work keeping track of what is on what where and when.

This is just what we do based upon what we wanted to achieve for our network. What you do depends upon what you want to achieve for yours.

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Thanks for the tip on using IDE for mirrorring.

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Comment from I Am Will on 06/27/05:
If I bought another 18G hard drive to create a RAID5, will I enable to add another 18G to the same RAID5 later on (so there will be 4 18G hard drives in the RAID5)?

Do you think 5G for the OS partition is enough?

The answer to your first question would somewhat depend on your raid controller, but I wouldn’t advise it.

As for is 5Gb big enough, that depends. If all that is being put on that drive is System files then probably. If the Exchange system (everything that is not database or log files), and anything else is on the partition, then 5Gb may be a bit small. Especially if the page file is also on this partion. Keep in mind that the pagefile is generally 1.5 times the amount of system memory.

Hope this helps.
Howie

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Thanks for the advice on mirrored drive. RAID5…I think it is good enough for my data already.

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