Drive expansion using Raid 5

[outofcontrol]

I inherited a Windows 2003 server on my job. The server has a RAID 5 controller so we have three physical 40GB drives in a PERC

We have several drives configured C for ops system D for programs F for user files L for logs and lastly W for websites

We need to expand F and L and W; the only way that I know how to do that is by backing up the drives and deleting the drives and recreating the drives and then restoring the data. We have added to more physical drives to the rack.

I understand that partition magic might work but not neccessarily guantreed.

Any thoughts??

Thanks
Joe

 

[Marcs41]

You can use dynamic volumes instead of driveletters, but seen the total amount of disk you have running now with 3 disks is just 80 GB, it may actually be easier to just backup those drives and recreate the partitions to your needs. It is a down and dirty way, but it will save you from a very potential issue if you were to use partition Magic.
On top of that, to purchase a server version of PM, just for that one time space increase is a waste of money and time.


Marc
_{If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
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[ntinlin]

Try Acronis Disk Manager suite. Heck of a lot cheaper.

Obviously proper volume expansion depends on whether your RAID controller is able to expand the RAID array where the W2K volume resides. If it can't then you'd either need to use spanned volumes, mount points or as Marc says blow the F, L and W volumes away and recreate them.

If you don't have too many shares you could also set up a new volume for say F: called M:, copy all the data to it, rename F: to N: and rename M: to F:. Recreate shares and then delete N:. I've probably overcomplicated that a little but you'll probably get the idea.

Neill

 

[Marcs41]

You really don't want to compare Acronis with RAID 5 now do you?

Marc
_{If 'something' 'somewhere' gives 'some' error, expect random guesses or no replies at all. Please specify details.
Free Tip: The F1 Key does NOT destroy your PC!
How Do You Get Great Answers To my Tek-Tips Questions?} See faq222-2244

 

[outofcontrol]

well it seems that the likely choice is to make a good backup (praying) and delete the drive from the system.


My question is can I delete just the F: drive without having to recreate all of the other drives??

 

[NickFerrar]

It sounds like you've already expanded the array to include the new disks (which is the easy part). To extend the drives you've already created you could consider using volume mount points (as an alternative to using re-partitioning software like Patition Magic).

 

[Jpoandl]

Here's what you can do...(Free solution)..

Note 1: Whenever you use HARDWARE RAID, Microsoft does NOT recommend using Dynamic Disks.

Note 2: See note 1

Note 3: Microsoft Recommendation regarding Dynamic Disks: If you do not need software based spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, or RAID-5 sets, it is best to use basic disks.

Note 4: BEST PRACTICES FOR USING DYNAMIC DISKS:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=329707

(For some reason people don't understand when to use Dynamic Disks, so I thought I would make sure that I was clear)

Anyway, here is what you need to do...


1) Add more disk space to your existing array. (I am familiar with HP Raid array and don't really know PERC...but I'm sure you can add more disks to the array and extend your volumes)

Normally the process is two fold. This first step is to add the physical disks to the RAID 5 set.

RAID sets are then divided into one or more volume. Some people simply create one large volume containing the entire disk. I prefer to create logical volumes in the Raid array configuration utility. If you create one big drive, when you boot into the OS, you can then divide the drive into multiple volumes. On the other hand, if you create volumes in the raid array configuration utility, the OS will already see that you have multiple volumes carved out. The OS will list out each one as a seperate disk.

Anyway, you will add the phyisical drives to your RAID set. Then you must EXTEND the volume to use use the newly added disk space. The goal is to make sure that your RAID array "sees" the new disk space as part of you logical volumes.

You will know if you have added the space properly by booting into the OS and going into Disk Management. If you added the disk space properly to your hardware RAID set, you will see UNALLOCATED space at the end of your disks.

2) Now to use the new space, use DISKPART. Download Diskpart utility and follow the MS instructions to use DiskPart:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=325590

Run DISKPART to Extend the appropriate volume to include the additional disk space.

a. DiskPART ? Launches the DOS-Based disk partition utility
b. DISPLAY VOLUMES ? Allows the administrator to view the available volumes
c. Select Volume X: ? Allows the administrator to target the appropriate volume for extension
d. Extend ? This command extends the targeted volume to use all available free space.



-Hope this helps...



Joseph L. Poandl
MCSE 2003

If your company is in need of experts to examine technical problems/solutions, please contact

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(Sales@njcomputernetworks.com)

 

[outofcontrol]

here we go!

First Thanks everyone for your help with the configuration; I followed the guidelines that Joseph just responded with. I went into the configuration and did an add member to the existing virtual drive.

My main goal was to expand only some of my drives. As I mentioned earlier I have:
C- OPSYS
D- PROGRAMS
F- DATA
L- LOGS
W- WEBSITES

I really only wanted to expand the F drive.

Well I added the new 40Gb drive to the existing three 40GB drives for a total of 101GB in the RAID 5 configuration

I went to the windows 2003 disk managemnet and unallocated space shows up. However the unallocated space seems to be only available as a PRIMARY drive and not a logical drive. Therefore I am not able to configure it as a logical drive.

I do have 5GB that shows as free space from a drive that I did not fully allocate.

Not sure why it will not let me do a logical drives

Help

 

[Jpoandl]

Did you take a look at DiskPart? This utility should give you the ability to add unallocated space.



How to use Diskpart.exe to extend a data volume
Article ID : 325590
Last Review : October 6, 2004
Revision : 1.0
This article was previously published under Q325590
On this Page
SUMMARY
MORE INFORMATION

SUMMARY
This article describes how to use the Diskpart.exe command-line utility to extend a data volume into unallocated space.
MORE INFORMATION
You can use the Diskpart.exe utility to manage disks, partitions, and volumes from a command-line interface. You can use Diskpart.exe on both Basic disks and Dynamic disks. If an NTFS volume resides on a hardware RAID 5 container that has the capability of adding space to the container, you can extend the NTFS Volume with Diskpart.exe while the disk remains a Basic disk.

Note When you use Diskpart.exe to extend an NTFS partition, Microsoft recommends that you perform this task in Safe mode or Active Directory Restore mode. By doing so, you prevent open handles to the drive that cause the process to fail.

Use the extend command to incorporate unallocated space into an existing volume while preserving the data.

The following are the requirements for the extend command: • The volume must be formatted with the NTFS file system.
• For Basic volumes, the unallocated space for the extension must be the next contiguous space on the same disk.
• For Dynamic Volumes, the unallocated space can be any empty space on any Dynamic disk on the system.
• Only the extension of data volumes are supported. System or boot volumes may be blocked from being extended, and you may receive the following error:
Diskpart failed to extend the volume. Please make sure the volume is valid for extending
• You cannot extend the partition if the system page file is located on the partition. Move the page file to a partition that you do not wish to extend.
To extend a partition or volume, you must first select the volume to give it the focus, and then you can specify how large to make the extension. To extend a volume, follow these steps: 1. At a command prompt, type diskpart.exe.
2. Type list volume to display the existing volumes on the computer.
3. Type Select volume volume number where volume number is number of the volume that you want to extend.
4. Type extend [size=n] [disk=n] [noerr] . The following describes the parameters:
size=n
The space, in megabytes (MB), to add to the current partition. If you do not specify a size, the disk is extended to take up all of the next contiguous unallocated space.

disk=n
The dynamic disk on which to extend the volume. Space equal to size=n is allocated on the disk. If no disk is specified, the volume is extended on the current disk.

noerr
For scripting only. When an error is thrown, this parameter specifies that Diskpart continue to process commands as if the error did not occur. Without the noerr parameter, an error causes Diskpart to quit with an error code.
5. Type exit to quit Diskpart.exe.


Joseph L. Poandl
MCSE 2003

If your company is in need of experts to examine technical problems/solutions, please contact

http://www.NJCOMPUTERNETWORKS.com

(Sales@njcomputernetworks.com)

 

[outofcontrol]

jpoandl and all:

The Dell folks were not helpful. I added the new drive to the array which worked great. I ended up with 34GB available to me as UNALLOCATED and I also had about 20GB of Free space available to me from a previous drive that I installed but did not use completely.

I appreciate the help that was given to me. I ended having to do a combination of things. After getting ahold of DELL. The only drive that I wanted to enlarge was the F drive but since that drive was in the middle of the disk management it was not expandable with diskpart or extpart.

The recommendation from Dell was to delete all of the drives except the operating system and then rebuild them in the size that I wanted. This option was not acceptable to me.

Therefore since the last drive that was created in the disk mangement view was the D: drive; I ended up using the diskpart utility to expand that.

When that was compeleted; I created a new drive with the remaining free space called the P: drive. However when creating this drive I was not able to use the Unallocated space. I was only able to great the drive using the free space.

Another call to Dell which led me to a utility called EXTPART that I used. The utility allowed me to expand the P drive to use the unallocated space versus as part of the logical drive that I created.

Needless to say I was able to increase my server by 60GB by taking a variety of steps. It should of been easier then this or I might just be dumb

Overall it seems to be working today

 

[Jpoandl]

(Your not dumb...it's fairly difficult task to add space... especially when you do it using free utilities....good job)

I would document that utilities that you used and the process so that you can do this task with greater ease next time....

-late

Joseph L. Poandl
MCSE 2003

If your company is in need of experts to examine technical problems/solutions, please contact

http://www.NJCOMPUTERNETWORKS.com

(Sales@njcomputernetworks.com)