Replace one disk with a model with more capacity. Have the controller rebuild the drive, then take out the second member and replace it as well. Have the controller rebuild it. Now you can perform a logical drive extension (supported on smartarray, starting with model 3200). When your OS is windows 2000 or windows 2003, you can use diskpart.exe (a microsoft resourcekit tool, free downloadable from their site) to extend the partition.

I’ve used this method once in production environment. With the old disks, you can revert to the original situation whenever you want (the raid configuration metadata is written to disk as well as to the controller. Putting back an old disk does revert that particular array to the old situation)

However, if you are running out of space on your drives, and you are looking to just add free space, you could [depending on your operating system] make a second RAID 1 and use Microsoft’s mount point technology to add free space. There are limitations to this that you need to consider. Check out MSKBA 812547.

It really depends on what you are attempting to accomplish. If you have the choice, RAID 5 migration is what I recommnd. IF you chose to use RAID 5, I highly recommend staying with the same make and model of drives. If you have the drive bay space and adquate power, you can add as many drives to give you the space you need.

On a side note though, have you tried doing one of these online migrations? I’ve heard many horror stories of people trying this in the past, and they’ve all ended up reverting to a data restore from tape.

Natethegreat: make sure you heed the backup advice

Regards,

If the original array was raid 0, then that’s different as it’s already in a stripe (albeit without parity). Please see Adaptec’s article for more info:

http://tinyurl.com/42knr

Based on the original question, I don’t believe you can migrate and keep the original data intact. Whatever you do, make sure you have a tested known good backup of the data before you try anything.

Regards.