Adding hard drives to a RAID 0 setup?

[gplanet]

Let's say i have a 4 drive setup in RAID 0, and i want to make it 6 drives in RAID 0. Can I just add 2 more drives and it will work? Or do i have to format all the drives first?

 

[Boonesmi]

what controller are you using?

** edit, i know this is off topic but instead of 6 drives in raid0 have you considered running a raid5? heck if any one of those drives failed you lose the whole thing if your running raid0

 

[gplanet]

I don't have one yet... I see one at newegg, by Promise, that's about $90. TX2000 or something?

this only supports 4 drives so if i wanted to go to 6 i'd have to get a different controller. does that change the answer?

 

[Boonesmi]

im not a raid expert but i dont think you would be able to just add the drives (but maybe someone here can tell you different)

but i would just take all the data from an existing raid and copy it to a spare harddrive, then setup the new raid and copy the data back

 

[Boonesmi]

actually that card only supports 2 drives in raid0

you can use 4 drives if you run raid 0+1

if you get a hardware based raid card then you will have the extra features that include raid5


by the way if you want a totally kick butt raid controller take a look at the 3ware 7410/7450 and 7810/7850.. hardware raid with all the cool features

** edit, i guess i should specify "if you want a totally kick butt raid controller" im refering to IDE not scsi... with scsi there are lots of kick butt controllers

 

[ChrisIsBored]

Yeah unless IDE RAID options are any different from SCSI, you'll have to re-initialize a new array if you were going from 4 to 6 drives. That means bye bye data so you better find a way to migrate all the info you want.

 

[reicherb]

Could you possibly just add a second array and use another drive letter or depending on the OS add it to a current drive?