Offline Defrag + Disk Replacement

[CSCKone]

We are having a problem with disk space, both excessive amounts and excessive fragmentation.

As such, we have procured 73gb drives to replace our 36gb drives (mirrored)

Will this procedure work with Exchange?
Stop all services and set to manual, offline backup, break mirror and replace one 36 (E drive) with a 73 and create an F drive
Copy all data from E to F and then remove final E drive
Replace with second 73gb drive and create as E:
Copy all data from F to E


Also, how long does a defrag take within exchange? Our database is currently 22gb, with almost 9gb of fragmentation (due to a number mailboxes of 1gb or larger being deleted or cleaned out)
Any general estimate of the amount of time this will take?

Also....
For the offline backup, what files need to be backed up? priv and pub obviously, .edbs? anything else? Do I then need to move or delete the .edbs? After the defrag and before I start the services, do I need to move/restore those .edbs?

Sorry for all the questions, I recently inhereited this position and this is my first big project and I want it to go smoothly.

Thanks for any help

 

[Zelandakh]

ok, 2 issues:

defrag - it is internally defraged on line, so don't worry. What you have is 9GB of space you can reclaim.

If you need to change the disks (I've run an Exchange database to within 50MB of the partition and had it running for 2 years!) - you can do it your way, but the new ones will still have 36GB partitions. To increase to 73GB you need to resize the partitions. If you are on 2k you can change the partition size if they are dynamic, otherwise its partition magic time...