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I am at present running my 2 x 120Gig SATA hard drives in a mirrored (RAID 1) array. I am running out of space on my discs and I only have 2 SATA connections on the motherboard.
If I swap one of the discs out for a larger one and then wait for them to automatically rebuild, then swap the second one out for another larger one, will they then read the extra space? Or will I be stuck with 2 x 250gig hard drives that think they are 120gig?
I don't really want to start from scratch again.
Well, after you replace each of the 120GB drives with the 250GB drives (rebuilding after each) you will have a single 120GB partition.
Now, you *may* be able to then format the remaining space as a new partition or resize the 120GB partition to fill the remaining space.
Michael J
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You don't sound to sure about that! How would I go about that? Might it just be better to get an IDE disk and bung all my extras on to that?
Cheers,
Tim.
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I've never needed to do it. But, doing that would not cause you to lose any data. At worst you would just lose some time.
All you have to do is shut down the PC and replace one of the drives. Restart the computer and there will be an option to rebuild the array (probably in the BIOS, but it depends on your setup). After the rebuild completes, shut down and replace the other drive and follow the same process.
Michael J
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That seems easy enough, the bit I'm not sure about would be resizing the 120GB partition, would I need to get any special software to do that?
Cheers,
Tim.
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To resize partitions that are in use, yes. I use Partition Magic, a retail application. There are free alternatives: ranish partition manager is one.
However, resizing a partition is not an operation to take lightly. I have never had a problem, but one small error and your data could be unrecoverable. You should always do a backup of any important data before performing any low level disk functions such as this. You could also just create a new partition the unused space.
Michael J
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I have a cunning plan! How about this;
1. I copy my entire hard drive on to an external hard drive using Norton Ghost.
2. Check computer boots from external HDD
3. Install raid controller and 4 x 250GB SATA2 hard drives running RAID5.
4. Remove old Hard drives (back up if it all goes pear shaped!)
5. Copy hard drive on to new RAID array and re-label it C: drive.
How does that sound? Not a cheap option but significantly future proof!
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Whoa, wait a minute. You never said anything about using a new RAID controller. Why not install the controller and the new drive (with the 120's still installed), then use Ghost to image the current OS partition to the new RAID5 array? Then remove the 120's and set the RAID5 array as the boot device?
Although, I'm curious what this machine is used for? RAID is a great thing when used for the right reasons. I do not use RAID on any of my "user" PCs at home. But, I do have a file server as well. I run RAID1 for the OS and RAID5 for the storage. But, of course, I still do back ups.
Michael J
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Its just a home pc. I play games and surf the net. However it was built by my good self partly to see if I could do it, I mean who needs a raid array for that anyway. I know its a tad overspecced, but half the fun is getting it to work!
I like the idea of cutting out the external HDD, I guess I was over-egging the pudding with that!
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