Adding space to an existing Win2k Partition

Hi Incognito2112,

Someone else correct me if I am wrong here but...

Your RAID management software should allow you to add the drives to your existing RAID container and allow for the dynamic expansion of the existing container.

You should consult your manual for the specific procedures.

pb

pbarrette is correct, it sounds as though you have created a second raid set? The whole purpose of hardware raid is to have access to your data if your os fails. 2 raids made in to a volume set is not the way to go about it. like the man says rtfm.

>I have just added 3 new drives and have created another Raid5 array.

Bit of a waste, that controller supports online expansion and I think even raid level migration.

>Do I have any concerns or worries about upgrading a production volume to dynamic disk?  I have never performed this process before and I'm kind of hesitant to perform this on my production data.

Yes, be very afraid: "Performing A Logical Drive Extension Using The Array Configuration Utility On Dynamic Disks With Certain Versions Of Array Controller Firmware May Cause Data To Become Inaccessible In Windows 2000" may not list your old raid controller but that's more because they haven't tested it.

Better to create a new volume than gamble with dynamic disks on old controllers.

I currently have 3 36gb drives in the existing set and I added 3 additional 73gb drives.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I added those 3 drives to the existing array I would lose over 30% of the space for fault tolerence because I'm mixing different drive sizes.

I am afraid...

Win2k knows two different types of diskdrives(a stripe set is normaly treated as one single diskdrive): basic and dynamic.
Using dynamic diskdrive you can combine, stripe or mirror several disks by software.
To convert a basic diskdrive to a dynamic and vice versa just right-klick the drive in harddiskmanagement-tool.
If your existing partition is on a basic disk you should NOT convert it!
Another way to use the new disk without assigning a new driveletter is to "mount" the new partition in an empty directory on the existing partion.

Yes, you would waste half the capacity of your 3 new disks. If you do it really slowly you can remove each 36GB disk with a 72GB one in turn and let it rebuild until the original array exists on disks twice the size and then expand it without using any more disk slots but you are probably right just to make an additional raid set.

But still not to enable windows dynamic disks on that controller but to have the minor inconvenience of two basic disks and some reformatting.

Why not phone Compaq support and ask them? they answer questions from anyone nowadays, not just ASEs and dealers engineers.

Win2k knows two different types of diskdrives(a stripe set is normaly treated as one single diskdrive): basic and dynamic.
Using dynamic diskdrive you can combine, stripe or mirror several disks by software.
To convert a basic diskdrive to a dynamic and vice versa just right-klick the drive in harddiskmanagement-tool.
If your existing partition is on a basic disk you should NOT convert it!
Another way to use the new disk without assigning a new driveletter is to "mount" the new partition in an empty directory on the existing partion.

Not familiar with the RAID controler and the best bet would be to call tech support.
But some RAID controllers support reconstructing the RAID's. So what you could try is to make a RAID 5+0 logical drive, if the controller supports 5+0.
That would mean that you use your 3x36 in a RAID 5 and the 3x72 in a RAID 5 and then you pair them in a RAID 0.

But it all comes down to what the controller supports and it may not work if it's the bootdisk.
It takes a lot of time to do a reconstruct.
Make sure you have done a full backup before attempting any test/experiment.

Why should you not covert to dynamic?  I thought it would just upgrade the disk like a FAT to NTFS conversion..

What are the benefits of Dynamic?  

Please expand on your last point of mounting the partition in an empty direcotry of the existing partition.  That sounds like it may be a solution.

Dynamic diskdrives can be uses for software raid or spanning in windows2k+. This can't be done with basic diskdrives.
You can't convert a basic drive to a dynamic drive and vice versa without loosing your partitions on them.

You should be aware that only W2K server can mirror in the OS. Pro can only strip volumes.

You can convert basic disk to dynamic disk without loosing the date on them. (of course I would not attempt this without a backup) Below is a link to the technet how-to.
You cannot convert back after you have created a dynamic disk without deleating the volumes. If you are using the disk for a MS cluster, then it has to be a basic disk.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/proddocs/dm_upgrade.asp

Once you have the disk upgraded, you can expand the disk easily. Below is a link to the technet how-to

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/proddocs/dm_extend_volume.asp

Thanks for all of your help - I will go ahead and give Compaq a call.

I trust that if they back me up that dynamic disks are dangerous on that controller but that replacing each drive in turn (waiting for the array to rebuild itself during each swap can be speeded up by adjusting the rebuild rate) and then increasing the size with tha ACU and diskpart works you'll ask Community Support to review the grade.

They might even tell you what MASE ID 17591503 means ;)

I thought there was an easier way in Win2k - just taking the unallocated space and adding it to an existing partition.

I would never use an OS to provide fault tolerence, but I just adding unallocated space shouldn't create any OS overhead.

I read a tech note a few days back that instructed to upgrade the disk to dynamic and then this could be accomplished by running a resource utility called addpart - or something along those lines.

I wasn't sure if upgrading my disks to dynamic would cause me a headache - until Dustpuppy mentioned i would lose my partition.  I hade MS.

You wouldn't lose the data normally although you wouldn't be able to span or extend after converting to dynamic anyway. You probably can't convert because it's not your boot disk, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;225551 .

DustPuppy is right that you may be able to convert [your c: drive] to dynamic and mount a new volume on a directory on that but is there any more value in that than just making a new drive and moving the data to it? You can't make an existing directory bigger that way without deleting its contents and replacing it with the mount point.

I'm still not all that happy with the C grade, any reason for it?

On the older Proliant Dl380's with a 3200 controller you are completely fine with extending a volume through the SmartStart utility as long as it is configured as a 'Basic' drive.

You run into difficulty when the drive is configured as a dynamic disk and you have any controller model less than 5x.

Yes, but isn't that what I said in my first comment? (and it's not only with Compaq controllers).

That I couldn't find the advisory to that effect so offered the '5.x works if you're lucky doc' instead to back my comment up is as much Compaq's fault as mine. Their web is pretty much un-navigable at the moment, it got messed up when they bought DEC and again when HP bought them.

>I wasn't sure if upgrading my disks to dynamic would cause me a headache - until Dustpuppy mentioned i would lose my partition.  I hade MS.

Sorry to hear you have MS, I had a friend who suffered from it at uni, think they're dead by now. But it's still not right to punish me just because someone else said something that isn't correct.

Sorry - I don't even remember a grade.  How would I increase your grade?

You have to post a 0 point question in https://www.experts-exchange.com/Community_Support/ with the URL of this question saying what grade you would like it changed to. A B would be fine since I forgot that 'convert to dynamic disk' is only available on the boot disk.

It was querying Compaq's online expansion Vs Extension Vs OS compatability matrix a few years ago that taught me about the bug but then the documentation just said dynamic not supported, at least it qualifies it now.

Anyway, which way did you decide to go - swap one at a time and then diskpart to stretch it or add it as another volume?

I have had good experience using a free disk expansion utility available form Dell. It only works on Basic disks and is relatively straightforward to use. To date i have only used it on servers but this works on HP/Compaq servers as well as Dell branded servers. The utility name is EXTPART and can be found in a Google search fairly easily using "Dell EXTPART" or by following this link http://support.ap.dell.com/ap/en/filelib/download/download.asp?fileid=R64398&devid=&format=83929&sid=&os=Windows_NT&searchtype=age

The command line is simple:

EXTPART.EXE X: 1024
Where X is the volume letter and 1024 is the number of MB you want to expand the drive by, just multiply the number of GB you need to expand by 1024. The process only takes a few seconds. As always you should save the drive settings before and making any changes, a system state backup would not be a bad idea either, though this has never caused a problem for me in the past. I have used this on both Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 Server.

If you want more control and don't mind spending the money then you could look at Partition Magic (for Workstations) or Server Magic (for Servers). Both support multiple OS's and allow both expansion, reduction and relocation of disk partitions. They also take much longer to run through the process.