I can’t find any reliable information on how to ADD larger disks to a SCSI RAID array.
Essentially its only capable of 2 disks, and it has 2 disks.
I’m unhappy with the sizing of those looking long term, so I want to fatten it up now.
I can’t fatten it up now, because I’m unsure how one can enlarge a RAID array, in the way we have, without destroying it.
Essentially, we have 2 disks. They are in a mirror configuration (one drive mirrors the other).
They have a single full size partition on the single logical drive.
So, how does one go about rebuilding a raid array in that situation without formatting?
Ideally, we can take advantage of the RAID hardwares own built in feature to rebuild. Remove one disk, and rebuild onto the new one.
I’m unsure if that’ll work 100%, because of the differences in sizing, yet can’t find any information at hand as to whether adding a larger drive results in a logical drive being created at 100% usage of the physical drive, or, whether it simply creates a logical drive of the same size as the other drive, and therefore, means we have two logical drives, and partitions.
Ideally I can get away with abusing the mirroring feature of RAID, but I can’t be sure it’ll work, and the experiment is a costly one to try out without at least having some expectatitons.
And I don’t have the spare hard drives, hardware raid controller, and time to test it all out and note some findings.
I’m going to continue my deep search tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll get some information from somewhere about how it works.
I don’t want to have to format, because it isn’t worth it. We’d have the extended downtime, the time of mine used, and so on.
It’d be easier to instead just get a second server when we grow this one to capacity (when we get moving with it).
But, if we can save a heap of dollars, and time and get a larger drive without too much fuss, then I think its worth doing.
Hopefully tomorrow I don’t come up empty handed (and I still yet need to find larger SCSI disks).
I’ve been spending a fair bit of time on a forum lately. Some questionable people post there!
Enjoy!