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Evan HinesFlag for United States of America

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Adding hard drives to increase RAID configuration on Dell Perc H700

I have a Dell PowerVault NX3100 with a RAID 6 configuration.  I am looking to add 3 more hard drives to the system to increase the size of one of the virtual drives.  I purchased 3 non-Dell hard drives only to find out that my current firmware version blocks those drives from being installed.  I have read that Dell has since released updated firmware that will remove the block of non-Dell hard drives on Perc H700 controllers (http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/906/t/19324790.aspx).  I have attempted to download and update the firmware but each time I attempt to update the firmware I get a message that the application is not compatible with 64-bit.  The file I'm running is a Windows batch file and it starts off just fine, so I'm pretty sure it's meant to be executed while running Windows.

So my questions are: can anyone confirm that a firmware update will remove the block status of non-Dell hard drives for the Perc H700 controller?  And assuming so, how do I go about updating the firmware to allow this to happen?  This is all being done in hopes of increasing volume size without losing data.  If I must completely reformat to accomplish that then that obviously poses a problem.

Thanks in advance!
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Dr. Klahn

And assuming so, how do I go about updating the firmware to allow this to happen?

One possibility is to install a 32-bit version of Windows on the machine temporarily.  Hopefully, there is a non-RAID IDE/SATA port on the machine that will allow attaching a single drive, loading a copy of 2000 or XP, and bringing it up just long enough to update the firmware.  If this approach is taken, it would be prudent to disconnect the RAID array beforehand.

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Evan Hines
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I accepted my own comment as the solution as the only other offered solution did not lead me to this particular solution.  This comment did result in the solution to the main question at hand an the other questions asked were answered by discovery once the firmware upgrade was completed.