Need more storage in my server.

[BigFatCow]

Currently in my server I have a raid 5 with 3 160s and it has 1.8MB free and a 80gig boot drive with about 103mb free. I have been just storing files on other computers throught the house but now all of those HDs are full. I have completely run out of storage in the entire house. I have figured out that if i buy a 4th 160gb drive i will be able to fill it just off of stuff stored on other computers. Seagate recently came out with 250 and bigger drives. I was thinking of getting 3 of the 250s for now. Is it possible to swap a 250 in for a 160 have the raid rebuild it self and do that 3 times, then have all the drives read as 250s or will they still read as 160s?

 

[Drakkon]

you cant raid a 250 with 2 160's or even 1 160...the drives need to be the exat same size (and hopfully make/model)

edit: whoops...yeah...unless as said below you have a raid card with support for OCE...but most of those are a little costlier

 

[Matthias99]

If the controller supports it, yes (usually called "Online Capacity Expansion" or something along those lines). You might also be able to expand to a 4-disk RAID5, which has a better utilization percentage.

And what are you storing that's taking up so much space?

Wait, maybe I don't want to know.

 

[BigFatCow]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
If the controller supports it, yes (usually called "Online Capacity Expansion" or something along those lines). You might also be able to expand to a 4-disk RAID5, which has a better utilization percentage.

And what are you storing that's taking up so much space?

Wait, maybe I don't want to know.

Im pretty sure my card supports the "Online Capacity Expansion", Ill look when i get home from work, Its a Promise Fasttrack SX4000. My original plan was to upgrade to a 4disk raid 5 but like i said in the OP i could fill that the second i got it setup.

Im leaving work now be home in like 15 minutes.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Sounds like you need to buy 4 x 250 (which will double space from 320 to 750 GB) and then use the 160's for backups or sell them.

You do know that RAID5 arrays can get corrupted or suffer a controller failure, right? if the RAID itself is your only backup method you have a good chance of losing it all eventually.

 

[BigFatCow]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Sounds like you need to buy 4 x 250 (which will double space from 320 to 750 GB) and then use the 160's for backups or sell them.

You do know that RAID5 arrays can get corrupted or suffer a controller failure, right? if the RAID itself is your only backup method you have a good chance of losing it all eventually.

I was thinking about buying 4x250s but i need to know of a way to trasfer the raid over to the bigger drives.

I am aware of those problems, but the way i understand it is that its prety rare for those things to happen, at least alot more rare than a HD failure.

Ok the Promise Fasttrack SX4000 does support "Online array expansion" now i just have to figure out how to do it.

 

[Matthias99]

Based on the manual for the SX4000 and the PAM software, it seems to support adding a fourth disk, but it doesn't seem to support swapping out drives for *larger* ones. However, the manual is not very explicit about this.