Upgrade RAID 5
April 4, 2008 8:23 AM Subscribe
What is the best way to upgrade a RAID 5 Array to bigger size hard drives?
I have a Powervault 725n..with 4 120 GB HDD's in a RAID 5 configuration. I want to upgrade to 4 500GB HDD's..Can I just replace one drive at a time..rebuilding the array each time? Or does anyone know the best way to approach this? Thanks in advance.
I have a Powervault 725n..with 4 120 GB HDD's in a RAID 5 configuration. I want to upgrade to 4 500GB HDD's..Can I just replace one drive at a time..rebuilding the array each time? Or does anyone know the best way to approach this? Thanks in advance.
I know nothing of "Powervault". I can' tell you the theory, though.
You can only resize it after you replace all the discs. A single smaller-capacity disc limits how large the volume can be, (count_of_discs-1)*smallest_size.
Make backups, then replace a single disc. Resynch. Repeat for each remaining disc. At the end, you'll have unused space on all discs.
THEN, you should be able to tell the system to claim that space for use as a) a new volume, or b) (maybe) as expanding the current volume.
Then, you should be able to resize your filesystem within that volume.
Be prepared to spring into action with your backups, if you need to.
With RAID, the tradeoff between redundancy and failure-due-to-complexity is nearly even, I say.
posted by cmiller at 8:36 AM on April 4, 2008
You can only resize it after you replace all the discs. A single smaller-capacity disc limits how large the volume can be, (count_of_discs-1)*smallest_size.
Make backups, then replace a single disc. Resynch. Repeat for each remaining disc. At the end, you'll have unused space on all discs.
THEN, you should be able to tell the system to claim that space for use as a) a new volume, or b) (maybe) as expanding the current volume.
Then, you should be able to resize your filesystem within that volume.
Be prepared to spring into action with your backups, if you need to.
With RAID, the tradeoff between redundancy and failure-due-to-complexity is nearly even, I say.
posted by cmiller at 8:36 AM on April 4, 2008
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If you can physically add all the 500GB drives and configure them as a separate array, you can migrate to it.
posted by daveyt at 8:35 AM on April 4, 2008