RAID 5 - Upgrade to bigger hard drives

[burningdan]

'm running WinXP on a RAID5 with 3 250G SATA drives.
I'd like to replace them with 3 1TB drives.
windows is installed on the RAID -- there's no other system disk.
it's an intel matrix raid controller.

Is there a way of going about this without copying all data to an external drive, installing windows and all apps on the new RAID, then putting data on new RAID?

can I replace one of the drives and it'll just automatically rebuild the missing drive onto the new bigger drive?

then repeat that process twice more?

would there be a problem when I replaced whichever drive has the MBR for the OS? How would I tell which one that is?

If all that works, I'd end up wtih a RAID5 of 250G on the 1TB disks and a bunch of unallocated space, right? how do I go about expanding the raid volume from 250G to fill the disk?

is there some freeware that'll do all of this? or different freeware that'll do different parts? if not, is there some payware I should use?

thanks!
dan

[SickPup404]

Originally Posted by burningdan

I'm running WinXP on a RAID5 with 3 250G SATA drives.
I'd like to replace them with 3 1TB drives.
windows is installed on the RAID -- there's no other system disk.
it's an intel matrix raid controller.

Is there a way of going about this without copying all data to an external drive, installing windows and all apps on the new RAID, then putting data on new RAID?

can I replace one of the drives and it'll just automatically rebuild the missing drive onto the new bigger drive?

then repeat that process twice more?

would there be a problem when I replaced whichever drive has the MBR for the OS? How would I tell which one that is?

If all that works, I'd end up wtih a RAID5 of 250G on the 1TB disks and a bunch of unallocated space, right? how do I go about expanding the raid volume from 250G to fill the disk?

is there some freeware that'll do all of this? or different freeware that'll do different parts? if not, is there some payware I should use?

thanks!
dan

First of all - Welcome Dan!

Having some trouble here... According to this, Intel Matrix RAID would be a combination of RAID0/1 on two disks.

What motherboard is this on? Also, is this a discrete RAID card, or integrated on the mobo?

I'm working on an array right now so a lot of the answers are fresh in my mind... Along with some suggestions:

Is there a way of going about this without copying all data to an external drive, installing windows and all apps on the new RAID, then putting data on new RAID?
Depends on the capabilities of the underlying hardware - don't give up hope yet.

can I replace one of the drives and it'll just automatically rebuild the missing drive onto the new bigger drive? then repeat that process twice more?
Doubtful, but there are other ways to go about this.

would there be a problem when I replaced whichever drive has the MBR for the OS? How would I tell which one that is?
The MBR is likely spread across your array, so they all have it.

If all that works, I'd end up wtih a RAID5 of 250G on the 1TB disks and a bunch of unallocated space, right? how do I go about expanding the raid volume from 250G to fill the disk?
If that is the final result after all is said and done, DISKPART will help. However, I prefer GParted - a Partition Magic GPL clone.

is there some freeware that'll do all of this? or different freeware that'll do different parts? if not, is there some payware I should use?
Mostly, see above.

The really helpful answers will be forthcoming once we know more about your setup and budget - ie. you could easily add something like a HPT RocketRaid 1740 for less than $150 and put all your 1TB drives on it.

However, problems start to arise when you get up here in the 2TB disk range. Anything over 2TB is wasted in MBR formats - not even multiple partitions can get at it. (Anything XP 32-bit and below use MBR. XP 64-bit, all versions of Vista/Server 2k3 SP1+/Server2k8 can use GPT which gets by the 2TB disk limit.)

[burningdan]

Originally Posted by SickPup404

First of all - Welcome Dan!

Having some trouble here... According to this, Intel Matrix RAID would be a combination of RAID0/1 on two disks.

What motherboard is this on? Also, is this a discrete RAID card, or integrated on the mobo?

I'm working on an array right now so a lot of the answers are fresh in my mind... Along with some suggestions:

Thank for the welcome and thanks for the time/effort/expertise.

the motherboard is an intel D975XBX
this review (And others) say it can do raid 5 http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2681
I'm positive that there's 3 drives in there and that they're all presenting as one volume.
I'm mostly certain that it's a 3 disk raid 5.
the hard drives are connected to the motherboard, not an expansion card.

Originally Posted by SickPup404

First of all - Welcome Dan!
Is there a way of going about this without copying all data to an external drive, installing windows and all apps on the new RAID, then putting data on new RAID?

Originally Posted by SickPup404

Depends on the capabilities of the underlying hardware - don't give up hope yet.

never!

Originally Posted by SickPup404

First of all - Welcome Dan!
can I replace one of the drives and it'll just automatically rebuild the missing drive onto the new bigger drive? then repeat that process twice more?

Originally Posted by SickPup404

Doubtful, but there are other ways to go about this.

other ways suit me fine -- thanks.

Originally Posted by SickPup404

First of all - Welcome Dan!
would there be a problem when I replaced whichever drive has the MBR for the OS? How would I tell which one that is?

Originally Posted by SickPup404

The MBR is likely spread across your array, so they all have it.

how smart of them!

Originally Posted by SickPup404

First of all - Welcome Dan!
If all that works, I'd end up wtih a RAID5 of 250G on the 1TB disks and a bunch of unallocated space, right? how do I go about expanding the raid volume from 250G to fill the disk?
If that is the final result after all is said and done, DISKPART will help. However, I prefer GParted - a Partition Magic GPL clone.

got it. I figured that part wouldn't be the hard part.

Originally Posted by SickPup404

First of all - Welcome Dan!
The really helpful answers will be forthcoming once we know more about your setup and budget - ie. you could easily add something like a HPT RocketRaid 1740 for less than $150 and put all your 1TB drives on it.

my preference is to not change the hardware (other than the drives). if that's not possible, I'll consider it.

Originally Posted by SickPup404

First of all - Welcome Dan!
However, problems start to arise when you get up here in the 2TB disk range. Anything over 2TB is wasted in MBR formats - not even multiple partitions can get at it. (Anything XP 32-bit and below use MBR. XP 64-bit, all versions of Vista/Server 2k3 SP1+/Server2k8 can use GPT which gets by the 2TB disk limit.)

it's XP32.

Do you mean bigger than 2TB individual drives in the array? or do you mean 2TB as the combined raid volume? My understanding of RAID5 is that in an array of 3 1TB disks, you'd wind up wtih 2TB of storage -- isn't it combined capacity of (number of hard drives - 1)?


Thank you thank you!

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

From what I understand, RAID5 = total space of disks used in RAID array...