RAID: Can you rebuild to a smaller drive providing capacity is still ok
Dear All,
Quick question as not been in this scenario before with this particular type of kit.
Client needs to pull drives from a server and wants to put lesser sized disks in there.
I.e. 2x 600GB SAS drives.
They can offload the data and be left with the servers themselves and have only 100GB in use.
Proposing:
Server
a) 600GB SAS
b) 600GB SAS
In RAID 1 mirror
Replace Drive B
Server
a) 600GB SAS
b) 146GB SAS REBUILDING
In RAID 1 mirror
Let it rebuild ... Then swap over Drive A
Server
a) 146GB SAS REBUILDING
b) 146GB SAS
So then you are left with a server with same config, lesser drives, then drives can be reused in larger array elsewhere (naturally being wiped).
They need to do a couple of servers in this manner. O/S is Windows 2003 SP2 (not that this matters really). Cards are PERC 5/IR in RAID 1.
BTW - These are Dell PE 840 servers so NOT hot swappable drives but internals.. So server off and swap jobby.... But thats not a problem
In theory all this is ok providing capacity used is less or will it fail as capacity is different when Drive B is inserted and it auto starts to rebuild?
Thanks all..
R
Quick question as not been in this scenario before with this particular type of kit.
Client needs to pull drives from a server and wants to put lesser sized disks in there.
I.e. 2x 600GB SAS drives.
They can offload the data and be left with the servers themselves and have only 100GB in use.
Proposing:
Server
a) 600GB SAS
b) 600GB SAS
In RAID 1 mirror
Replace Drive B
Server
a) 600GB SAS
b) 146GB SAS REBUILDING
In RAID 1 mirror
Let it rebuild ... Then swap over Drive A
Server
a) 146GB SAS REBUILDING
b) 146GB SAS
So then you are left with a server with same config, lesser drives, then drives can be reused in larger array elsewhere (naturally being wiped).
They need to do a couple of servers in this manner. O/S is Windows 2003 SP2 (not that this matters really). Cards are PERC 5/IR in RAID 1.
BTW - These are Dell PE 840 servers so NOT hot swappable drives but internals.. So server off and swap jobby.... But thats not a problem
In theory all this is ok providing capacity used is less or will it fail as capacity is different when Drive B is inserted and it auto starts to rebuild?
Thanks all..
R
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not possible. backup, move data, create new Raid-vol, restore. best approach.
well at least now you can tell them why it can't work instead of just saying it won't work. That should take the option off the table forever.
ASKER
Thanks everyone..
R
R
ASKER
However, they REALLY wanted an answer to the above proposal.
Thanks all ... as I thought it will be a no no, however, was not nearly 100%..
Thanks again.
R