Need RAID strategy help

[Good Companion]

I have an old AMD Athlon machine running WinXP Home that we use as a family file server. Basically, all we use is for is a central file repository. I've got a Highpoint 374 IDE 4 port RAID card and 4 hard drives hooked up to it. They're all old 120 and 160 GB drives that I have set up in a RAID 5 array.

I have 2 volumes in the array "Users" and "Support". My "Support" volume is out of space and that is where I save backup images to. I bought a 1 TB SATA drive to add to the server.

I am a newbie to RAID, so I'm open to any suggestions. My goal is to add the 1 TB drive without losing data. I believe I will have to remove 2 of the IDE hard drives to do this due to space and power reasons. (I may be able to have all 5 drives connected temporarily if that helps.)

How do I do this?

TIA!

[cksboy15]

So you want RAID 0?

never dealt with RAID setups myself I think it's RAID 0 that makes em all act like 1 drive (I only use 1 500GB hard drive..........)

[Good Companion]

No, the array is all set up and has been working. One volume is out of space and I need to swap in a new drive. I also wouldn't mind if someone looked at my configuration and suggested any needed improvements in setup.

[GroundZero3]

You won't be able to add the new drive to the array. What raid are running? You can add the drive and share it out but not add more space ton your array with it

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

I have an old AMD Athlon machine running WinXP Home that we use as a family file server. Basically, all we use is for is a central file repository. I've got a Highpoint 374 IDE 4 port RAID card and 4 hard drives hooked up to it. They're all old 120 and 160 GB drives that I have set up in a RAID 5 array.

I have 2 volumes in the array "Users" and "Support". My "Support" volume is out of space and that is where I save backup images to. I bought a 1 TB SATA drive to add to the server.

I am a newbie to RAID, so I'm open to any suggestions. My goal is to add the 1 TB drive without losing data. I believe I will have to remove 2 of the IDE hard drives to do this due to space and power reasons. (I may be able to have all 5 drives connected temporarily if that helps.)

How do I do this?

TIA!

Hi,

So, your "Support" volume is where you save you backups to...but is there anything else you have on there..?

The simplest solution would be to add the 1 TB drive as an additional drive and just change your backups to point to that drive instead, meaning that you wouldn't need to replicate (or back up) your data to an alternative place before swapping it into place in one of your existing RAID arrays...

If you bought an external HDD enclosure (about £25 at Curry's/PCWorld in UK, US might be cheaper than the ~$40 exchange rate suggests, but I'm too drunk to check and can't be @r$£d anyway) and then did what you want/need to do with that, then you wouldn't be limited to what power your PSU has either....


Let us know how you get on and what you end up doing..

[Good Companion]

So, I connected the new 2TB Sata drive to an open IDE port on the RAID through an adapter. My goal was to transfer all the data and then reconfigure everything. On first bootup, computer sees the 2 TB, but the RAID volumes don't appear. I restart and at RAID bootup, I get dumped into the RAID bios which tells me the volume is damaged. I tried disconnecting the 2 TB and the hard drives that appear as "broken". None of this allows the RAID volume to start properly.

At the RAID bios screen the only options is gives me is to continue without loading the volume or destroying the array. Repair is grayed out.

I picked RAID 5 because I thought this gave me maximum redundancy of my data. Now, I can't seem to get to my data at all. When I boot into the computer by skipping loading the RAID volume and then open the RAID management program, the hard drives themselves appear to be fine. Just the array is unusable/unaccessable.

Help!

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

Hi,

For maximum redundancy, RAID6 (or 50 or 60) is best....just that the cost is outside most (home) users' budget...

Without seeing what you're seeing in front of me, I can't picture the next step/s - but I would see what happens if you disconnect the 2 TB drive from the system......it *could* be that it is somehow borking the way the drives are presented to the OS....

Perhaps you could take a couple of pics to let us see what you're seeing....



I think that this might be something to bring GZ in to look at...

[Good Companion]

NL Man:

I'm not at home at the moment, so I can't take a picture. In short though, I have a hard drive connected straight to the motherboard's IDE port. This is for the OS and is not part of the array.

I have a 4 port IDE raid card. I have 2 hard drives connected each to channels 1 and 2. (I think the 2 120's are on one and the 160's on the second.)

I connected the SATA 2 TB drive to channel 3 via the adapter. Initially, it did register but it's transfer speed was listed as ATA 133.

I have disconnected the 2 TB from the system (totally - both data and power) and the problem recurs.

Hope that helps!

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

I've just checked and seen that GZ hasn't been online for a while.... His profile shows:

Last Activity: July 5th, 2011 11:40 PM

I suggest that you take some pics (or a video, and put on YT) of what you see....


One thing I've just thought to ask is whether this is within the OS or at boot...as this could have a big effect in the advice we need to give you...

[Good Companion]

One thing I've just thought to ask is whether this is within the OS or at boot...as this could have a big effect in the advice we need to give you...

This is happening at boot. The PC boots, then the RAID card boots, then (if all is well) WinXP starts. I'm not getting past the RAID card boot.