NightFalcon
Senior member
Hi there, I'm currently in the final planning stages for my home file server and I wanted to ask some things I recently thought of.
First of all, my file server will be running on hardware RAID5 implementation, most likely using 3ware 9500S-8 controller. Now this will be the first time that I'm dealing with hardware RAID, and I wanted to make sure that everything that I'm planning with it will be possible.
That controller gives me 8 SATA ports, and while eventually I may end up using all 8, to start with I'm planning on getting 3 250 GB SATA Western Digital drives to give me 500 GB of initial space. As that space begins to run out, I'm planning on adding more of the same drives to the config. So this would be where my first question comes in... Will there be any problems in adding a 4th, 5th, ... drive to the existing RAID setup? I'm assuming that once I connect the new drive, the controller should simply take the new space, get it ready for the current config, and then just begin using it. Will that be how it works? I'm getting a supermicro enclosure which has 8 hot-swap sata bays, so my hope is that I'll be able to add additional drives with the system on and seeing the increased space once the controller had a few minuets to do its work.
Now my second question is, suppose I've filled up all 8 slots with the 250 GB drives which should give me 1.75T total, is there anything I can do after that to increase the size, or is that pretty much a done deal? Say I start replacing the 250s with 400s, for example... Do it one by one giving the controller time to copy data over to the new drive and restoring the array. Would it be capable of detecting the new size and using it, or will it be forced to use only 250GB no matter what the size of new drives is? (This is manly for me to determine if I should, in fact, go with 250GB drives to begin with, or if I should maybe step it up to 300 or so since I may have a bit more then 2T of data in a couple of years.)
Any help appreciated 🙂 Oh, and please don't ask if I really need that much space - yes, yes I do 😛
First of all, my file server will be running on hardware RAID5 implementation, most likely using 3ware 9500S-8 controller. Now this will be the first time that I'm dealing with hardware RAID, and I wanted to make sure that everything that I'm planning with it will be possible.
That controller gives me 8 SATA ports, and while eventually I may end up using all 8, to start with I'm planning on getting 3 250 GB SATA Western Digital drives to give me 500 GB of initial space. As that space begins to run out, I'm planning on adding more of the same drives to the config. So this would be where my first question comes in... Will there be any problems in adding a 4th, 5th, ... drive to the existing RAID setup? I'm assuming that once I connect the new drive, the controller should simply take the new space, get it ready for the current config, and then just begin using it. Will that be how it works? I'm getting a supermicro enclosure which has 8 hot-swap sata bays, so my hope is that I'll be able to add additional drives with the system on and seeing the increased space once the controller had a few minuets to do its work.
Now my second question is, suppose I've filled up all 8 slots with the 250 GB drives which should give me 1.75T total, is there anything I can do after that to increase the size, or is that pretty much a done deal? Say I start replacing the 250s with 400s, for example... Do it one by one giving the controller time to copy data over to the new drive and restoring the array. Would it be capable of detecting the new size and using it, or will it be forced to use only 250GB no matter what the size of new drives is? (This is manly for me to determine if I should, in fact, go with 250GB drives to begin with, or if I should maybe step it up to 300 or so since I may have a bit more then 2T of data in a couple of years.)
Any help appreciated 🙂 Oh, and please don't ask if I really need that much space - yes, yes I do 😛
