Hello

I have a poweredge 2800 with a perc 4d controller, I run on windows 2003 server. This machine have 3 physical scsi disks arrenged as one logical drive level raid 0, the 3 units are exactly the same (i have all my data backup daily) A few days ago, the physicall disk 0 start to get some problems so I get to force it online. I have the spare but I want to migrate the raid level to 1 or 0-1 ; so I order 3 disks more identicall to the ones already running.

So my question is: Is there a method in wich I can install the 3 more disks and start mirroring (raid 1) my actual arregment (raid 0)? So my configuration, aplicattions, Os, licencing and data preserve and the services never stop running?

Otherwise I have to reinstall all my aplicattions, databases, OS, and reconfiguring the active directory.

Thanks in advance.

Simplest way is to "ghost" or clone your current system to something like an external hard drive. Then install your new hard drives and recreate your RAID. Then clone the system back from the external hard drive to the server.

You might want to lookup Symantec Ghost and Acronis products for information.

Also, you might want to read up on the different RAID types as I think RAID 5 might work better for you.

Assume that I already did an Internet search.

Raid 0+1 or raid 10 are faster than raid 5 but you need more disks.

Who ever set up the server on raid0 did not know what they were doing. You can lose everything at any moment. A hot spare drive can't even help you since its a raid0 which has no fault tolerance.

In other words you can't take that drive0 out of the system and replace it or you will have lost everything with no hope of recovery other than your backup.

Analyst suggestion of cloning is the way to do though Acronis has better raid support than Ghost does in my experience.

Since you only ordered three disks and we suspect disk0 is going bad you only have 5 disks to play with. You have enough disks to do raid 0+1 or 10. I would suggest raid 10 and use the 5th disk as a hot spare in the system. This will give you the best fault tolerance/speed/bang for the buck and you will have a hot spare in the system that will automatically take over if one of the disks dies.

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Thanks for your help, since drive 0 start having problems I order the spare, wich I have now, so I have 6 good disks to work.

Raid 0+1 and 10 require an even number of disks. You should ALWAYS have a hot spare.

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So the best i can do is: Tae a full image of the logical drive running on the raid 0 arregment, take out the fail disk, put the spare disk and the other 3 news, start the configuration utility and format all 6 drives as raid 1 (mirrorig) and then recover the image ?

What acronis program is the best to perform this job? So I have to do this in the fewest time possible? I have to order it so in my city there's no retailers.

Thanks

I personally would consider using ntbackup.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

pepe65 before you do anything spend some time educating yourself about RAID.

You can not make 6 drives a mirror. You can only do that with two drives. You aren't making a hot spare which is another huge mistake.

Here is perhaps the simplist scenerio for you:

Buy the server version of Acronis
Run chkdsk /r on the existing raid0 array
Run uninstall any programs that can easily be reinstalled.
Run disk cleanup and check every choice
Run defrag
Run NTbackup, check System State and backup everything.

With the existing Raid0 in place put in two addtional drives and create a Raid1.

Run Acronis and clone the Raid0 array to the Raid1 array.
Take the Three Raid0 disks out of the system labeling them 1,2 and 3 so if need be you can put them back in in the exact same order.
Move the two raid1 disks to the first and second slots in exactly the same order [disk on right stays right, disk on left stays left].
Boot into the raid controller and confirm the mirror set is healthy.

Now you should be able to boot into Server 2003 and it should be exactly as the Raid0 array minus some space.
[since mirroring you only get 1disks worth of space where with a volume set you get all three disks space which is why I had you uninstall programs and clean up the drive space]

Then add the rest of the disks and configure a raid5 volume [3disks] with one disk as a hot spare for all.

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Thanks wanderer, I have another question:

At the time I put the 2 additional drives to create raid 1 (only whit the new 2 discs) I will still can boot to windows 2003 server from the raid 0 arrangment?? I think my controller can't support that.

Regards

Adding drives won't effect your boot.

What is it you don't think your raid controller supports?

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That dell's support said to me

I am still unclear as to what the support told you wasn't supported. Adding two drives will not effect your boot of the raid0 array. If they told you otherwise I would suggest the tech didn't know what he was talking about.

This is where the technique of calling back a second time and getting a different tech but asking the same question comes into play.

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