Please double check my upgrade and RAID migration plan
Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 12:22 am
My current storage array, not boot drive, is nearly full.
My current setup is Win 7 x64, 3x 1 TB SATA drives in a RAID 5 array, Intel ICH9R, Intel Matrix Storage Manger 8.9 software. The array is "hardware RAID," configured by the Intel ICH9R, and yields 1.8 TB usable space and is NTFS MBR.
I am going to add 2 more 1 TB drives. I know I need to convert to GPT to go beyond 2 TB in Windows so here is my plan, please check it for any errors or gotchas.
>Install the 2 new 1 TB drives as a RAID 0 array, will yield ~2 TB of new free space.
>Copy data from current RAID 5 to new RAID 0 (I could just attach the new drives as single drives but then I would have to split the data and copy twice)
>Convert RAID 5 to GPT per http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 25671.aspx (deletes everything on the array)
>Copy data back from RAID 0 to RAID 5
>Delete RAID 0 array and attach the drives to current RAID 5 array and grow the array either in RAID bios or using Matrix SM (not sure, have never done this before, please advise) I can see a currently grayed out option under Modify Volume in Matrix SM for "Add one or more member hard drives" I assume its grayed out because I don't currently have any drives to add.
>Go to Windows disk management and extend the 1.8 TB volume.
>Done
Thoughts?
edit: Also, as a secondary question, should I use this opportunity to use Windows Dynamic disks instead of the Intel ICH RAID? What happens if this mobo dies down the road and can't be replaced with anything similar with each scenario?
double edit: It seems like dynamic disk RAID 5 is only available in Windows Server OS's, is that true?
My current setup is Win 7 x64, 3x 1 TB SATA drives in a RAID 5 array, Intel ICH9R, Intel Matrix Storage Manger 8.9 software. The array is "hardware RAID," configured by the Intel ICH9R, and yields 1.8 TB usable space and is NTFS MBR.
I am going to add 2 more 1 TB drives. I know I need to convert to GPT to go beyond 2 TB in Windows so here is my plan, please check it for any errors or gotchas.
>Install the 2 new 1 TB drives as a RAID 0 array, will yield ~2 TB of new free space.
>Copy data from current RAID 5 to new RAID 0 (I could just attach the new drives as single drives but then I would have to split the data and copy twice)
>Convert RAID 5 to GPT per http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 25671.aspx (deletes everything on the array)
>Copy data back from RAID 0 to RAID 5
>Delete RAID 0 array and attach the drives to current RAID 5 array and grow the array either in RAID bios or using Matrix SM (not sure, have never done this before, please advise) I can see a currently grayed out option under Modify Volume in Matrix SM for "Add one or more member hard drives" I assume its grayed out because I don't currently have any drives to add.
>Go to Windows disk management and extend the 1.8 TB volume.
>Done
Thoughts?
edit: Also, as a secondary question, should I use this opportunity to use Windows Dynamic disks instead of the Intel ICH RAID? What happens if this mobo dies down the road and can't be replaced with anything similar with each scenario?
double edit: It seems like dynamic disk RAID 5 is only available in Windows Server OS's, is that true?