Array Expansion

[ZipperHeadMan]

Hi All,

I've recently "expanded" the array and "extended" the logical drive on my HP proliant server. I achived this as directed by HP support via the Array Configuration Utility.
All appeared to work well. The problem is in Disk Management....the OS is not recognizing the newly added space. The ACU shows 1 logical drive w/ 4 physical drives (total 52GB). Windows shows 1 logical drive (33GB) w/ 16.5 GB of unallocated space.

Has anyone else seen this problem? HP flipped the bill and has told me its an OS (microsoft) issue.

If I use a third party app (partition magic) to expand the existing drive, will it conflict with whats already been committed to the array controller?

Nothing is ever easy .... any help is appreciated!
TREE

 

[porkchopexpress]

Don't know if this might help, the problem is that the NTFS volume is still the same size.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr...elp/5079e4a1-b0be-4fdf-9b4a-ece7a0755c5c.mspx

If you use Partition Magic it shouldn't affect the RAID setup as long as it's hardware RAID. The ideal way here if it's a critical server would be a good backup and recreate the partition then restore the OS and data.

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

I have seen this problem in the past. If rescanning your drives in disk administrator doesn't work you may need to do the following. Please research this with microsoft before attempting.
What I had to do was close disk administrator, delete the DISK subkey in the registry, and re-open disk administrator so that it rewrote the key based on the new disk (logical) drive sizes. Caution: This only works on basic drives and basic drives setup using Hardware RAID, do not attempt if you are using any kind of software RAID or if your disks are dynamic, server will hang after a re-boot with an FT disk error. It can be fixed, but that is a whole other ball of wax.
Hope this points you in the right direction...

 

[ZipperHeadMan]

I guess I didn't make it clear that this was a RAID 5 (hardware) configuration.

The solution here was simple.

HP ACU made the changes at the hardware level.
Partition Manager made the changes at the software level.
On a side note, Partition Manager v5.6 is compatable with RAID 5 configurations. Very slick piece of software.

Porkchop...restoring a production server from backup is never the best approach unless a total and unavoidable disaster occurs. Thanks for the input though.