RAID 1 Hardrive fail

[Out_of_Sync]

Hello,

 

I've had one drive fail in my RAID 1. Since the server is older that 5 yrs, I am having trouble finding another 80GB drive to rebuild it.

 

Is it possible to move the Windows 2003 installation onto a larger drive and build another raid 1 with bigger disks?

[sted]

yes you can use a tool like ghost to clone it but you will possibly need to be able to set up both raid arrays concurrently in the same pc (or at least another pc with the same raid controler as arrays often dont like being moved). It might just be easier to slam a bigger drive in as the 2nd drive and just waste the spare space

[Out_of_Sync]

OK, I don't have another machine to do this with. The server is over 5 years old will a bigger secondary drive work ? Is it then possible to resize the partition afterward ?

[Butuz]

You can use a bigger secondary drive but it will only use 80gb of however big the drive is.

 

Butuz

[plexer]

Put in 1 larger drive let it sync.

 

Replace smaller drive with second larger drive.

 

After sync create new partitions and expand to fill disk space.

 

Ben

[jamesfed]

As with doing anything like this make sure you have a full verfified bare metal backup to restore from in the case that everything goes ** up.

 

But as plexer said - just replace the failed drive with your new HDD, let it migrate the data from the working drive onto that (and you need to be sure its done this) then replace the working drive with a 2nd bigger drive and it'll migrate from the 1st replaced drive.

Then crack into storage management and you should note that you have alot more storage to play with.

[Out_of_Sync]

As with doing anything like this make sure you have a full verfified bare metal backup to restore from in the case that everything goes ** up.

 

Well I have a full system and systems state backup. That should be sufficient. Do the server need to suport "hot swop spare" to be able get the data from to the new drive that will be bigger ?

[plexer]

No when it's synced the mirrored large drive will show partitions the same size as what you allready have and then free space upon which you can create a partition to expand into.

 

I've never tried this on a software raid mirror so I can't be 100% sure you will be able to expand into the unallocated space but in any case you can use a bigger drive as the replacement.

 

Ben

[Butuz]

You'll only have more storage to play with as long as your RAID Card supports resizing/expansion of arrays. If it does not you'll end up with lots of free space but no way to use it.

 

Butuz

[plexer]

Yes but it may also be software raid on the server we don't have that piece of information atm.

 

Ben

[Out_of_Sync]

Well it is a HP ML 110 (+5 yrs) server with a Win2000 Promise Fastrak S150 SX4 Controller and a SCSI Adaptec Card 29320ALP - Ultra320 SCSi.

 

 

wdp