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Fixing RAID problem

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by dnme

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Our hard drive capacity is down to nothing (almost). We are using RAID 5 on a Novell Server. The hard drive capacity is 4GB each, we recently bought two 18GB drives.

Can I remove a primary hard disk thus initiating a failure and allowing the network to work off the mirror drive. Then install the larger hard drive and allow a 'recovery' without losing overall capacity or performance.
DESPARATE
If not anyone got a solution please, pity please...

Thanks for your interest in advance...

9 replies

by jimbb

It all depends on your RAID hardware, but most likely you can swap the 4GB disk for a 18GB one. Except: your controller will use only 4 GB, so you will win nothing. As far as I know all of the disks in a RAID-set have to be similar, or the controller will use only the smallest size.
Do you have free space in your disk cabinet? In that case you maybe can add the two disks there (if your controller allows it), and make a new RAID set. Since there's only two disks, of course only RAID0 (no fault tolerance) or RAID1 (mirroring) is possible for that set. On that new set you can then create a new NW partition, and use that space to either expand one or more volumes, or create a new one.
The other solution is backup-replace disks-install NW-restore...

Jim

by gmscne

Raid 5, striping with parity, is usually used with 3 or more drives of the same capacity. If you have only 2 then you are probably using raid 1, mirroring. You can increase capacity by creating a new partition or disk array by using the new drives together. If you use a 4 gig drive as part of a set, the extra space on the new drive will not get used. If your controller only supports two drives, then back up your data and replace both drives with the larger ones, then restore.

by wcraigmiles

If you replace a 4 gig drive with an 18, you will not be able to access more than 4 gig of the 18 gig drive. The RAID controller will dumb it donw to match the others in the system. Why not replace all of the 4 gig drives with 9 gig. Or even lookat adding an external raid box. Depending on the controller you might be able to attach the external box to the current raid controller. Then add the 2 18 gig drives to that. Mirror those drives, then extend the volume across the new mirrored partition.

Can you provide some details about the hardware of the system?

by wcraigmiles

Also, mirroring won't help you in this situation. Remember that you mirror partition to partition. SO you'll never use more than 4 gig of the 18 gig drive.

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