Upgrading Hard Drives In A Raid 1 Mirror

[Simmo]

Hey guys.

I've got a Dell Server with an onboard SATA raid controller with 2 * 80GB HD 's in a Raid 1 mirror. They're presented as 1 drive to Windows which is partitioned into C: (20GB) & D:(80GB).

I bought 2 500GB drives intending to create another Raid 1 mirror but I didn't realise the Raid controller only supports a maximum of 2 drives. So what would be the safest way to go about cloning the existing mirror onto the new drives and replacing it? Has to be absolutely 0% chance of something going wrong as this data is important.

I was thinking of using a disk image tool to image the existing mirror , then swapping out the drives with the new ones and restoring? Any suggestions on software if I got that way.

[Prasert]

To be absolutely sure you can backup all the data on one 500GB disk.

After that you can use the RAID controller to rebuild the data on your disks by swapping them respectively. The description below worked perfectlt for me, but it was done on SCSI disks, and the RAID controller supports hot-swapping the disks. I assume yours support hot-swap as well.

Take out 1 disk, and check the RAID controller status. It will say that 1 disk has failed.

Replace it with the empty 500GB disks. The RAID controller will start rebuilding the set onto the new disk (leaving the space upto 500GB empty).

Check if the RAID-set is rebuilt completely.

If anything goes wrong you still have all the data on the other 500GB disk. If all is okay, continue.

Take out the other small disk.

Insert the 2nd 500GB disk and again wait until the RAID set is rebuilt completely.

After the whole operation, you can use the RAID software to create a new logical drive on the empty space, or expand the existing logical drive (if the RAID controller supports this action).

[Guest Reimar]

Try to use NTI Drive Backup and create a set of Recovery DVD's and not forget to create a Boot Diskette as well just to be sure you can later boot!

After cretation of the Recovery Set, remove the existing drives and insrtall the new drives. May you need to resize the partions after recovery.

Another way may is HDD-Clone which you need to start from diskette and clone HDD by HDD, one old to one new.

Unfortunate the above mentioned software is PayWare! If you have one day time and don't find another solution, I can create a 2 day time limited version of both progs. If you need, PM me.

[Rice_King]

Just remove a drive, let it rebuild completely,then replace the other drive and let it also complete a rebuild.

Reference page: Tek-Tips (I know this references an HP server. But a RAID 1 is still a RAID 1.)

[astral]

On the HP NonStop systems that have used Raid 1,

full mirroring, for the last 32 years you can hotswop one disk, then the other.....................

However I would not try that on a Windows server.

[Rice_King]

I would enjoy knowing the final outcome of this Simmo.

[sfokevin]

Yes, tell us the outcome... I would worry that the above described technic would run into one glich... Once you put the first 500GB drive in your system it would try to rebuild the raid array and format the 500GB into a drive that has only 80GB recognizable - It will want to make a "mirror" of the original good drive and the other 420GB will not be usable... which may defeat your whole idea... This is not permanent but you will have to try another strategy... I would get one of those cheap external usb enclosures for a HD and put one of your 80GB drives in and see if you can access your data... If that works then remove the other 80GB drive and put both 500GB drives in at the same time... rebuild your new 500GB mirror drive and plug the usb enabled 80GB drive in and copy it over to the new array... If this data is really important look into a service like mozy.com - at just over $50 a year you can have a nice off site mirrored backup of unlimited size.

[Rice_King]

I would worry that the above described technic would run into one glich... Once you put the first 500GB drive in your system it would try to rebuild the raid array and format the 500GB into a drive that has only 80GB recognizable -

I think you're right. And that is why we have disk partitioning utilities.

[Simmo]

Hey All.

I worked it out successfully after some headaches. Yes, mirroring one of the 80GB's on to one of the 500GB's and then mirroring again to the other 500GB left me with a virtual 80GB Raid 1 disk set of 2*500 physcial GB drives. As this is a low end Dell server (the Raid card was a hardware / software type) there was no way to extend the virtual volume and disk image tools like Ghost & Acronis were choking on trying to access the Raid drive (you need a software driver) and it only supported a maximum of 2 SATA drives . That had me head scratching for a while for my next move until I found some info online about splitting the mirror.

Removed the drives from the Raid 1 set using the array manager utility and it gives you an option to keep the partition info intact. This let me boot one of the drives into Windows Server with everything intact. From there I extended and setup partitions on the full 500GB using Partition Magic. The trick from there was to reboot and create the Raid 1 set specifying to keep the partition info intact and to build the new Raid 1 set from the drive I just extended.

I could then reboot it with the new Raid 1 set into Windows Server 2003 and wait for the Raid Sync to complete (that took only about 5 hrs ).

The whole thing took the best part of a day and night as I was being really careful and the boss wanted me to document everything. The good part to this technique is the old drives are now a point in time bootable snapshot backup and can be used for an offsite backup.

Anyway thanks for the tips and I hope that helps anyone else out that does something similar.

Edited June 30, 2007 by Simmo

[Rice_King]

Thanks for letting us in on the conclusion Simmo. Glad it worked out.