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aburton
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 How to configure the 4th Hard disk of 36gb into existing 18.2gb x 3 hard disk
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A SearchStorage.com reader recently asked: kindly guide how to configure the 4th hard disk to the existing capacity of 18.2gb x 3 hard disk. we have the system with raid -5 , system already showing the 4th hard disk but we could not get the 4th hard disk capacity into the existing one. I hope you may be having some solution please advise to me i will be higly appreciable.

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ASKED: July 25, 2005  3:19 PM
UPDATED: July 26, 2005  8:34 AM
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I take it you are using Hardware Raid 5, this option should have a utility to configure your raid array, in this utility there normally is an option to "expand" the disk array, this should then prompt you for any non assigned disk that the hardware raid has found to attach to the existing raid array, as the other disks ar 18.2Gb drives this is the max disk space you will get out of the new disk not the full 36Gb,it should then look like it is going through a rebuild process before going back to normal operation. Hope this helps.
Last Wiki Answer Submitted:  July 26, 2005  4:11 am  by  Buzzcox   0 pts.
All Answer Wiki Contributors:  Buzzcox   0 pts.
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The storage management software supplied witgh any hardware RAID controller will indeed allow you to expand the stripeset (as previously indicated…). you MUST be aware and insure that the new hard drive is AT LEAST as large as the existing members of the stripeset. By this I mean even 1KB smaller will cause the management software or controller BIOS not to recognize the new drive as a potential member of the array.

I emphasize this because two hard drives from different manufacturers both nominally rated at 18.2GB capacity can indeed be two different sizes (Seagate, Quantum and IBM all are…). You may even see two identical drives with different physical capacities due to bad blocks…

Poppaman2
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You should also check your storage manager software to ensure that this new 4th disk wasn’t automagically reserved as an unused spare; I seem to remember that some software suites have a tendency to do that…

Sonotsky
 680 pts.