How many hard drives are you using currently? Perhaps the easiest way is to create a second VD and copy everything from existing one, and then remove the old VD.
I'm not sure mirroring the existing system to a single drive, replacing the raid with 3 new drives, and then copy the system back to the new raid would be easier than a backup/restore to the new raid. Is there an easier way?
- Pete
What I mean is to connect all 6 drives and do a VD to VD copy. Of course that would require a expander backplane because the board has only 4 SAS ports. If you're not using the expander backplane then you would need to do a backup/restore.
Thanks. I was hoping I could swap out drives one at a time with larger drives and have the capability of increasing the overall RAID size.
Peter,
Are you talking about breaking the RAID and rebuilding with a new, larger disk? If so, what'll happen is the RAID will only grab the appropriate size of the new disk. For instance, if you had a RAID 5 with 500GB disks and replaced one with a 1TB disk. The RAID rebuild would only grab a 500GB chunk of the new disk.
An issue with breaking and rebuilding is that you have the chance of a second disk failing in your array during the rebuild resulting in a two drive failure causing data loss.
The backup and restore provides the benefit of having a backup if you experience any issues during your data migration.
However, a tested backup strategy should be an integral part of a healthy data security system. See:
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/CS-025645.htm
Regards,
John
