is there a way to "add" drives to a raid 5 array?

[mcveigh]

say you've got 3 drives all idnetical in a nice raid 5 array. is there a way to add another identical drive to the array and have it rebuild using the new drive?

I need more space on a small server

 

[Gunbuster]

I think some of the high end SCSI raid cards will let you do that

 

[Goosemaster]

What is the adaptor you are using?


If it is software RAID{ ) what OS?

 

[mcveigh]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster
What is the adaptor you are using?


If it is software RAID{ ) what OS?

dell PERC card ( I've only seen those on dell's website)

3x 18Gb 10K rpm U160.

I've got an older server with a 3ware raid card (ide) that I might want to do it to someday

 

[sharkeeper]

My SCSI HBA's will allow this. They also allow converting a RAID5 array to a RAID0 array. (but not back!)

I'm not sure about ATA HBA's.

If your PERC is LSi/AMI based it should support this feature. OEM's have habits of watering down features in firmware though. :|

Cheers!

 

[mcveigh]

Originally posted by: sharkeeper
My SCSI HBA's will allow this. They also allow converting a RAID5 array to a RAID0 array. (but not back!)

I'm not sure about ATA HBA's.

If your PERC is LSi/AMI based it should support this feature. OEM's have habits of watering down features in firmware though. :|

Cheers!

what are you using?

 

[sharkeeper]

LSi Logic MegaRAID Enterprise 1600.

Cheers!

 

[Vegito]

almost all should be able to.. i have 3 drive array that upgrade on the fly w/o shutting down or rebuilding to 4 and to 5 drive.

I had ami raid cards and some of them are adaptec, high end ones.. dual channel w/128 meg cache..

what do you have ? or are u looking for one

 

[mcveigh]

it's a dell perc3 scsi raid controller

 

[LazyBastard]

It depends on your RAID system. At work we have a few Digital(now Compaq(now HP)) StorageWorks RA7000 RAID arrays, with dual HSZ70 RAID Controllers. Using the command line interface to the HSZ70 controllers, we can add and remove drives from an array. In fact, I just did this in December to our mail service array, to replace a failing hard drive. This was done while the array was online, with no down-time for the mail service.

Of course, a StorageWorks RAID Array system is nowhere near cheap. You have to use StorageWorks controllers, and StorageWorks hot-pluggable drives with this system.