I'm kind of new to RAID and before I go about increasing the size of ours I would like to get some feedback on if I'm going about this the correct way. I have included as much information as I can gather about our setup, and what we would like to achieve.
HP Proliant DL380 G5 Win Server 2003 R2 Standard x64 Edition Processor: Intel Xeon 2.66gHz Memory: 8.00GB RAM
Here is a physical photo of our RAID:
Here is more detailed information from the Array Configuration Utility:
I have read on the HP Smart Array Controllers User Guide. (Can't post a third link) on page 80 that: "If you insert a hot-pluggable drive into a drive bay while the system power is on, all disk activity in the array pauses for 1 or 2 seconds while the new drive is initializing. When the drive is ready, data recovery to the replacement drive begins automatically if the array is in a fault-tolerant configuration."
My big question here is, how do I find out if the array is fault tolerant? I wasn't with my company when this was set up, and I can't find it in the configuration anywhere? Is the way it's set up indicate that it has fault tolerance?
I plan on hooking up an external hard drive to the HP Proliant, and backing up the entire array using a program like clonezilla or macrium reflect before I touch anything. As well as I find out the array is fault tolerant, I would like to just replace one drive at a time while the system is on (off business hours) until the entire array is rebuilt with 1tb drives. I then believe I can use a partition manager (or maybe the Array Configuration Utility) to increase the overall size of the array to use the newly added space on the new drives.
I was thinking of purchasing 5 of these to rebuild the array on port 2 (shows up as our Data Drive on the server with 537gb) with: HP 1TB 6G SATA 7.2K rpm SFF (2.5-inch) SC Midline (can't post a 3rd link) Under the Related Products page it says these are compatible with our HP Proliant. Or would I have to get 7 of these to rebuild the entire Array A to utilize the new space?
Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thanks