Dell Perc 6i raid5 array: replace drives and expand VD?

Question

I have a Dell T300 with a Perc 6i, to which 3 500Gb drives are connected. The are assembled into a raid 5 ~1000Gb VD. This setup is working fine, however system is filling up and I would like to increase capacity.

My idea was something along the following lines:

1. Add a new 2Tb drive as a hot spare to the array
2. Remove one of the 500Gb drives, so the 2Tb drive will replace it
3. Once reconstruction is finished, repeat the process until there only are 2Tb drives in the array
4. Expand the array size to fill the 2Tb drives, making the VD about 4Tb.

However, looking in the docs, I cannot find any information about point 4. So is the perc 6i able to expand a raid5 array? How?

Or should I proceed completely differently to achieve my goal?

Answer 1

RAID5 is dead. Don't use it if you like your data, especially not with 2TB drives. Also, while your method might work (I don't know about the Perc6i and your point 4 either), it will take an awful lot of time and during this time your drives will be constantly active.

Depending on your production requirements, I would recommend to put your data away on a temp drive, remove the old disks, create a new RAID (6 or 10) on the new disks and put it back there from the temp drive.