Raid 5 -upgrading capacity

[songokussm]

I am running out of space. So i want to increase the storage capacity of one of my raid5 arrays.

the array consists of
200x3 = 400gb of total space

Now i want to upgrade the array. by swapping out the 200gb drives with 320gb w/o loosing data.

my raid controller is the highpoint rocketraid 2320.=, if that is important.

My idea is just to hotswap one 200gb at a time and replace it with a 320gb. then let it rebuilt after each swap. time consuming, but it works. I dont have enough ports just to plug in the new 320gb drives and create a new array and then copy the data. so this seems like the best solution.

how does it sound? is it possible?

 

[Arcanedeath]

This sounds possible but risky, What I would try and do it get 1 drive to hold all your data then start a new array w/ the 320 gb drives and copy the data from the stand alone drive to the array

 

[songokussm]

that isnt a posibility

 

[ND40oz]

As it rebuilds, your still only going to have 200 gb capacity on each of the new drives. Once you have a three replaced, you'll need to expand the capacity of the array from 400 gb to 640 gb. I'm not sure if your controller supports it, but the HP controllers I've worked with do. I then had to use an acronis boot cd to go in and expand the partition. I did this with a 74 gb raid 1 array and successfully transferred it to a 146 gb raid 1 array. Took a half an hour total time.

Another option is image your array, hook up the new drives and dump down the image on the new array.

 

[songokussm]

whats the fuction called?

 

[songokussm]

anyother ideas or coments?

 

[Jeff7]

I did an upgrade in my array, with a Promise SX4000. 160GB -> 200GB, motivated by a desire to ditch my Hitachi drives, after having a few too many IBM/Hitachi's fail on me.
I put the drives in one at a time. The array automatically noticed a drive missing, and took about a day to reconstruct the data. Then I'd do the next drive, and so on. The extra space appeared as unpartitioned space, which I then formatted.
Now this is a bit risky too, but no more than what most people live with every day - if during the reconstruction one drive should decide to die, your data dies with it.

I eventually got Acronis Disk Director and repartitioned everything just the way I wanted.

 

[Kaido]

This may or may not work, but...

1. Remove one of the internal drives, or use a spare one. Set it as a secondary hard drive (not in RAID) or put it in an external enclosure.
2. Use Norton Ghost to clone your primary drive to your secondary drive.
3. Remove the internal RAID scheme and replace with the new drives
4. Use Norton Ghost to clone the secondary drive to the new primary drives

Should save you some hassle. I have a tutorial on using Norton Ghost on my website, although you'll need to use the Cloning function and clone it to the secondary hard drive rather than backing it up to a CD/DVD disc:

http://restore.wiredby.com

Good luck, let us know how everything turns out.

 

[songokussm]

There are two things i know i can asure myself of. One is that this will work. Becuase all that i am doing is swapping out one drive for another. The part i am unsure of is gaining the extra storage space.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: songokussm
There are two things i know i can asure myself of. One is that this will work. Becuase all that i am doing is swapping out one drive for another. The part i am unsure of is gaining the extra storage space.

You won't gain any space on that RAID 5 volume by just replacing the drives. To use the extra space:
1) Create a new volume using the unallocated space after you've replaced the drives.
2) Use a 3rd-party utility to grow the volume in size.
3) Back up all the data and create a brand new array and restore to that.
4) Add the additional drives as a new, second, array.

 

[spikespiegal]

anyother ideas or coments?

Don't use RAID 5. Right here is an example of why it's a pain in the ass.

Stick with RAID 1 next time, and save yourself some aggravation.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: spikespiegal

anyother ideas or coments?

Don't use RAID 5. Right here is an example of why it's a pain in the ass.

Stick with RAID 1 next time, and save yourself some aggravation.

Yeah. To gain that extra space efficiency of RAID 5 vs. RAID 1, you lose flexibility and simple data recovery. But lots of folks find it worthwhile.

 

[DBL]

The card supports "Online Capacity Expansion". Wouldn't that be what you are looking to do? I'd imagine there should be some explanation on how exactly to perform this.

BTW, let me know if this is the answer. I'm looking to buy this exact card and easy expansion would be a must have in order for me to purchase.

Actually, it looks like it only may just refer to adding additional disks to your array. Hmm. I did find this which is a little ambiguous.

The RocketRAID 2220 supports both OCE (Online Capacity Expansion), and ORLM (Online RAID Level
Migration.
The RAID software provides support for these features through a single function, known as OCE/OLRM.
With the OCE/ORLM function, you can transform an array from one RAID level to another RAID level
and/or resize the array dynamically, even under I/O load.

 

[songokussm]

@RebateMonger

i do not have the space to backup all of my data. that is why i am replacing one drive at a time.

my space i mean both physical space and Data Storage.

@spikespiegal
i agree half way. but i need space more then anything with recovery options. Raid 5 is it.

@DBL
I own 4 of 2230. i lov every one of them. tons of features.

 

[DBL]

Originally posted by: songokussm
@DBL
I own 4 of 2230. i lov every one of them. tons of features.

Are they in 4 different computers? Can they be connected together to expand raid capacity (8 -16 drives).

It seems like you could use the OCE to replace the drives 1 by 1 and then use the OLRM to resize the array dynamically. They question is if you could resize it beyond the original RAID size. Maybe their support could answer that for you? It sure would suck to spend the time replacing your drives with higher capacity drives only to found out that the extra capacity is wasted.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: spikespiegal

anyother ideas or coments?

Don't use RAID 5. Right here is an example of why it's a pain in the ass.

Stick with RAID 1 next time, and save yourself some aggravation.

RAID1 would be almost as much of a PITA in this case; again, you'd have to swap out each disk in turn and rebuild the array to the larger drive, then expand it once you're done. It's just that you'd only have two disks instead of 3 or 4 to do. This is the only way to expand a mirrored RAID array online. It's also the only option if you cannot image the contents of the entire array to something else, even if you're willing to take it offline.

I'm *pretty* sure the RocketRaid cards can do what you want, but you would either have to use something like PartitionMagic to expand your partition, or else create a new partition with the extra space you add. Your controller's documentation should have more information (although it is often vague about things like this...)

 

[songokussm]

i called their tech support. i am fariliy pleased. he said i should be able to even though i am replacing one drive at a time. His reasoning is that they allow you to access the left over space (other wise known as waisted space). Thus i should be able to use a third party program to expand the raid array to take up the left over space.

@DBL
They can be chained together and it will act like one card. You will have access to all of your drives. 4x8 (4 cards, 8 ports) = 32 drives

@Matthias99
The manual is garbage. It has no information on advanced features.

 

[InlineFour]

Originally posted by: spikespiegal

anyother ideas or coments?

Don't use RAID 5. Right here is an example of why it's a pain in the ass.

Stick with RAID 1 next time, and save yourself some aggravation.

but you're limited to 2 drives total in raid 1. the OP would quickly run out of storage.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: songokussm
i called their tech support. i am fariliy pleased. he said i should be able to even though i am replacing one drive at a time. His reasoning is that they allow you to access the left over space (other wise known as waisted space). Thus i should be able to use a third party program to expand the raid array to take up the left over space.

Isn't this what I suggested? Hmmmm?

 

[songokussm]

instead of repartitioning, wouldn't i just expand the partition?

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: InlineFour

Originally posted by: spikespiegal

anyother ideas or coments?

Don't use RAID 5. Right here is an example of why it's a pain in the ass.

Stick with RAID 1 next time, and save yourself some aggravation.

but you're limited to 2 drives total in raid 1. the OP would quickly run out of storage.

Raid 0+1, stick as many drives in the array as your controller supports.

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: songokussm
i called their tech support. i am fariliy pleased. he said i should be able to even though i am replacing one drive at a time. His reasoning is that they allow you to access the left over space (other wise known as waisted space). Thus i should be able to use a third party program to expand the raid array to take up the left over space.

Isn't this what I suggested? Hmmmm?

Yeah, I think a few of us said the exact thing over a period of a couple of days...

Edit: and to the OPs last question: Yes.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: ND40oz
Raid 0+1, stick as many drives in the array as your controller supports.

A four-drive RAID5 has half the 'wasted' space as a four-drive RAID10/01 (1/4 instead of 1/2). An eight-drive RAID5 has a quarter the 'wasted' space (1/8 instead of 4/8).

You need to buy significantly more disk capacity to run RAID10 or RAID01 and get the same amount of usable space. The tradeoffs often make running RAID5 (or, when possible, RAID6) worthwhile.

 

[songokussm]

Raid 0/1 or any combination of the two, just isn't a possibility because of the amount of storage i would loose.

My big plan, is to have a huge storage system. Something to put all of my family video, photos, DVDs etc. But i want more experience in this before i jump into it. Plus the wife just bought herself 2005 Aston Martin... its hard not to pick that car over my storage project.

My other options are raid 5 or 6. I already have the controllers for raid 5. meaning cheaper. so that is my plan. While i am waiting for high point's response, i have another question.

Can you have two different arrays on the same partition? or have windows see it the arrays as the same?

Is what i want to do, is this. The Lian Li V PC-V2000B tower has the possibility for 18 hard drives and 1 dvdburner. I want to raid all of those 18 hard drives. I will be using Western Digitals 400GB Raid drives. My raid adapter of course will be Highpoints 2230 x3 (as thats all that will fit in the board), and a pci video card. athlon 64 3000, 1gb ddr.

Now is what i want to do is raid them all in raid 5. But for security reasons, every 3 or 4 drives will need to be in its own array. that would give me the option of having 6 hard drives fail in a 3 way configuration or 4 hard drives to fail with 2 as backups in a 4 way configuration. However that would make 6 or 4 partitions respectively, ie 6/4 paritions.

Now back to my question. Is it possible to have all of the arrays only "show-up" or "act-like" one drive? Instead 6/4? Or am i being too paranoid?

 

[Scarpozzi]

I'm the storage manager for a University Campus....I do this stuff all the time.

For your situation you can't replace your smaller drives with larger ones because the RAID controller sees your drives as a maximum of 200GB.

What are you using for Drive bays...do you have a JBOD or are these drives mounted in a system/server? If you have extra drive bays, you can simply create a second array with your disks and use some software to link the 2 LUNs together. For example, you'd have your current RAID Array and add a second RAID array and let the software take care of linking the two arrays together to make it one large volume.

This would be great for now if you expect to refresh your hardware next time around and have a solid backup solution and a good warranty on your disks.

You may need a program like Partition Magic to expand your windows disks if you're wanting it to all appear to be one volume. I know it can be done on Linux File Systems and Netware.