Upgrading Hard-drive Space on Level 5 Raid

[millshre]

Our Network admin recently moved on to a new position, and I am currently having to pick up a project that has been pushed up to high priority. The server that hosts all of our student/teacher/faculty folders is running out of space. Here is what I know:

 

HP Proliant DL380 running Windows Server 2003 R2

6 - 147.8 GB HDs

Raid-5

C: = 10 GB (Windows)

D: = 673 GB

 

Our previous Network Admin has purchased 6 - 300 GB HDs to replace the current ones. I have got to pretty much tackle this over a single day. What is the best way to go about getting this up and running with the new hardware without risking the data on the disks?

[LukeC]

backup all data up first and make sure you know it works

[3s-gtech]

Robocopy all of the files on the disks onto a Windows machine with an NTFS file system. Check your backups too. Take out the disks, re-jig the RAID (if possible and practical) and install the OS and roles, then Robocopy the files back. You could also use something like Acronis to clone your existing array to a USB disk, then back onto the new array.

 

Check and double check your backups first.

[sted]

i have in the past replaced disks one by one so replace disk1 let it rebuild then disk 2 and so on. its slow but no downtime but always make sure you have a backup. it willalmost certainly take more than a day but if you dont immediately need the space just change the disk friday every evening for a few weeks

[3s-gtech]

Problem with that, is RAID 5 has a nasty habit of kicking the bucket while doing major rebuilds. Doing it six times, moreso. I ditched it on my file servers for RAID 1 for OS and RAID 10 for storage.