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ajc2c

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Raid 5

Have A dell r710 server with PERC 6/i controller, Raid 5 is setup with connector 0 having 4 physical drives associated. I want to increase the entire amount of drive space by adding a single drive to the array without stepping on my OS that is on same connector. When I place an additional drive it creates another array connector. I than have connector 0 and connector 1 showing. I want to add the drive to the existing connector 0 and keep as raid 5. OS is on 2x146gb drives under raid 5 and appears to be on Connector 0.  If I try to reconfigure it seems i  lose my OS. Is there a way around this? The server is being re purposed for offsite backup, nothing besides the OS is important and in fact other drives are clean of data, just don't want to reload the OS if not needed.  

thanks in advance
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Rojosho
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Hello,

I found this, have a look... it involves creating a backup, expand, restore...
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/storage/f/4466/t/19538905 

Still searching for Plan-A.

Rojosho
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Member_2_231077

4 disk slots are on one connector and 4 on the other but it doesn't matter which connector the disks are connected to. It doesn't "create" another connector, they're physically soldered onto the board.

You should be able to expand the RAID 5 array without affecting the RAID 1 with the OS on,  just make sure you have the correct logical disk selected when you select to reconfigure it. Obviously you should back up before changing anything but data loss should not occur,
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Connectors will not affect your ability to add drives to your array. If you select Reconfigure for your RAID 5, you can add a disk to it "live" and without affecting your data. All Virtual Disks are handled individually, so what you do to your RAID 5 will not affect your RAID 1.
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ASKER

The only option I see to change the configuration is on the PERC 6/I Integrated (embedded) entry. If I select that and select available tasks Reset Configuration, I get a Caution The PERC 6/I Controller contains boot partition resetting a configuration permanently destroys all data on virtual disks attached to the controller. If the system or boot partition resides on these virtual disks it will be destroyed. below that it displays the virtual disks

OS                    Ready                    Not Assigned                 Raid-5                      150.00GB                             Windows Disk 0                  SATA
DATA               Ready                    Not Assigned                 Raid-5                      1944.38.00GB                      Windows Disk 1                  SATA
In OMSA, go to Storage, PERC, Virtual Disks ... you should have a Reconfigure option in the drop-down menu of Available Tasks for the RAID 5.
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ASKER

Although the new disk is in the bay and shows ready, no option exists in the virtual disks selection to reconfigure, the available tasks are.
Delete
Check Consistency
Assign/Unassign Dedicated Hot Spare
Blink
Unblink
Rename
Change Policy
Slow Initialize
Fast Initialize
REpleace Member Disk
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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PowerEdgeTech
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ASKER

For some reason I knew that would be the case, and I would need to backup,  reconfigure  the array and restore!!! Slicing it is then! Thanks!
You cannot resize the size of the array
Take a windows full backup. Or use Acronis backup advanced to take a full backup. Reconfigure the array by adding the new disk. Restore the backup. That's it. If you use acronis create bootable media first. Then use that dial to restore the data to new bare metal .
Muhsin ... just to be clear: he only can't resize the array because there is more than one VD across the same set of disks. If there is ONE VD across the disks, you CAN resize the array.