Posted: 6/21/2007 11:02:33 AM EDT
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I've been running a RAID 1 (mirror) set for several years now on my main computer. The time has come that I'm getting the click of death from one of the drives... so I need to replace a drive. I'd really like to upgrade the capacity of the array however, and wondering how that would work. As a SWAG I was thinking that if I replaced the malfunctioning drive with one of larger capacity, and did a rebuild... then replaced the good original drive with a matching higher capacity one... would I end up with the original partitions replicated and unpartioned space that I could format and use? Using the built in controller on an old Via GA-7VRXP motherboard. I upgraded drive capacity once before on this machine but just reinstalled windows with the new drives, I dont have the time to deal with reinstalling right now if I don't have to. I do have two (matching) drives of the same capacity as the existing raid drives so I can just use those if that would be better. |
It will probably support auto-rebuild then. First, make a backup of everything if possible. Then yank the bad drive and put in a new one. Depending on your setup, it might only make the drive the same partition size as the previous drive. Your RAID Setup will tell you if does this. Once setup is complete, unplug the other smaller drive. Boot to new larger drive, expand the partition if need be, then plug back in the second larger drive. Add it to the array and let it rebuild it. -d |
I didn't know that partitions could be resized while in use? I have no other backup of the data (and due to the amount of data, backup isn't feasable, that's why I'm using raid)
You can use a program like Partition Magic to do it, or there are some free Partition tools out there.. -d |