Re: Replacing a raid 5 controller with different card

My understanding is that a hardware array is a collection of hard
drives present to the OS at the bios level. You go in to the hardware
raid controller and you make an array based on the number of drives
and what the card will do. 2 drives might let you make one array using
Raid 1. 4 drives might let you make an array using Raid 5 with 3
drives and a hot spare, 4 drives in the Raid 5 array, or you might be
able to make two Raid 1 arrays with no hot spare. Hardware raid lets
you choose the whole hard drive to bring in to an array. You cannot
bring in part of a hard drive.

In the operating system you make partitions. Choose the size of the
partitons when setting up the OS or later if you have spare space on
one of the arrays.

If you are attempting to do software raid many wiser than me say don't
do it.

I am doing at least 20 gigs for the C: partiton, maybe even 30 gigs. A
few other partitions to hold Exchange, company files and user files.

On Sat, 3 Mar 2007 10:37:10 -0800, Ray Brunelle
<RayBrunelle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Someone suggested I create two arraya i my new card, a raid 1 using 15GB of
disks 0and 1 and a reiad 5 using the remaining portions of disk 0,1and 2 I
imagine I will lose 15 gb of disk two this way but he suggested performance
would be improved. Is it possible to have two diferent arrays in the same
physical drives? I have 160GB drives 3 in the raid 5 and one as a hot
spare. Would the above be the best configuration?

"Paul Shapiro" wrote:

I did this with a test system by first installing the new raid card into the
existing system, but with the existing disks still attached to the existing
controller. Install the new raid driver. Then back up the system which now
contains the necessary drivers. If your finances permit, it's safest to use
new disk drives so the old ones are still available in case of problems.
Remove the existing disks, disable the existing controller and install
Windows Server onto the new raid. You have to be on the same Windows service
pack as the system you backed up, but you don't need to install any of the
SBS stuff- no Exchange, etc. Create partitions to match what you had in the
old system. The partition sizes can change but you need the same drive
letters available before restoring the old system. Then you can do your
restore. Its been a while, but if I remember correctly, the system rebooted
without any problems after the restore.
Paul Shapiro

"Ray Brunelle" <RayBrunelle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:DC73FA87-7DAE-420C-AF54-D0277E4EFE8F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I don't see how a swing migration is easier than backing up the server,
upgrading the hardware and then restoring the server. If I was to swing,
what
is the min hardware for the temp box?

"Charlie Russel - MVP" wrote:

There's almost no chance that anything except a clean migration is going
to
work. Your RAID array is highly unlikely to be recognized by the new
controller. And even if it is, you've got the issue of drivers.

I'll tell you what I'm doing on my system to get around this - I'm doing
a
swing migration off to a temporary box, and then swinging back to the new
box with the updated hardware. www.sbsmigration.com


--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64


"Ray Brunelle" <RayBrunelle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:353D1683-7F31-4A54-8F86-F60CADDEDE02@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I am using a Dell poweredge 1420 server with windows sbs 2003.
Everything
is
good except the CERC raid controller they sold me is a slug. I would
like
to
replace it with a ARC -1100. I have 3 SATA hd's partitioned into two
logical
drives c:\ containing the operating system and E:\ containing the data.
What
is the best way to move the existing drives over to the new card? Just
plugging them in to the new card and rebooting is probably not going to
work is it?



.

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