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I have a home server, with the following:
- ASUS Maximus II Formula LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard (Supports 0/1/5/10 Matrix RAID)
- Windows 7 Ultimate (Can upgrade to a server OS if need be)
- 1TB Hard Drive (x2)
- 2TB Hard Drive (x2)
My goal is to add drives to the server as needed to increase available space. When my case reaches its drive capacity, I will replace the smaller drives with new, larger drives. For instance, suppose my case had four drive bays. In order to add a new, 3TB drive, I'd need to replace one of the 1TB drives with the 3TB.
My ideal end state is:
- Ability to add additional drives
- Ability to replace smaller drives with larger drives
- Fault tolerance
- As little proprietary technology as possible
I am currently using windows spanned volumes, but I do not know how well it will work when I want to replace a smaller drive.
Any suggestions?
Backup is not truly necessary. This is not vital data. I can buy a controller if necessary... Is JBOD my only option to be able to replace smaller drives with larger drives? If that's even a possibility. – Mike Christiansen – 2011-07-28T15:09:44.060
Yeah, just don't use spanning. With RAID1 mirroring you simply replace 1 drive, reestablish the mirror, replace the other drive, resize or make a new partition. With RAID5 you replace 1 drive at a time, each time causes a rebuild, then most controllers will allow you to expand the array, then resize/add partition – JamesRyan – 2011-07-29T08:37:12.750
1I understand how RAID works. I'm looking for a solution that will allow me to replace a smaller drive with a larger drive, then allow me to utilize the space. As I understand it, with most (if not all) RAID controllers, if I have 2x 1TB drives, and 2x 2TB drives, if I replace a 1TB with a 3TB, the RAID array will still be the same size. Is there an implementation that will allow me to perform this functionality? – Mike Christiansen – 2011-07-30T18:51:54.733
please reread what I wrote, you replace each drive in turn with a larger drive, once they are all bigger drives then you can expand the array to fill the space. So if you have 2 arrays, one 2x1TB and one 2x2TB you will need to replace both 1TB drives with 3TB drives – JamesRyan – 2011-07-30T22:38:28.477
This is a standard thing among all RAID controllers? Or is it a feature set specific to a specific brand, etc? – Mike Christiansen – 2011-07-31T15:15:20.567
It is not standard but is common to most brands. But as I mentioned above with RAID1 you can always fall back on splitting the array, resizing the partition and recreating the array. – JamesRyan – 2011-08-01T09:03:37.723