Any advise on expanding a RAID 5 array? My configuration is as follows:
ASUS GeForce RTX 2080 Ti O11G Dual-fan OC Edition
Asus ROG Maximus X Code
Corsair CMK32GX4M2B3466C16R
i7-8700k
Samsung MZ-V6P1T0BW 1000Gb 960 Pro
Seagate ST8000NE0004 Enterprise Nas hdd (x3, IronWolf Pro, RAID 5)
Seasonic Prime 1000W Titanium
BeQuiet Dark Base 900
Noctua NH-D15
Windows 11 Pro
So I built this PC back in 2018 and this was a couple of years before Wendell posted his video on hardware RAID being dead so please don’t give me grief for my build…if anything it’s Wendell’s fault. Anyway my array is full so I bought 1x ST8000NT001 (ST8000NE0004 seems to be an older model I can’t find anywhere) to add to my array. From what I’ve gleaned the process is:
Power down PC
Connect new drive
Boot up and use Intel Optane Memory and Storage Management to add the drive to the array.
Use Windows Disk Management to expand the array size.
Reboot server.
Anyone had any experience with this? Is it really that simple? Any advice? Like is it advisable to have any amount of free space in the array before I can start the expansion? CAN I be using (read and/or write) the array while all of this is taking place?
I live in South Africa so only reason I’m doing this is because I don’t have the money for a new server even though I want one because all is fine with my current server but it does feel a bit like a ticking time bomb, my next server will use Proxmox, TrueNas Scale and then likely Ubuntu for Plex but till I have the R100K for that the R6K I spent on this will have to do. I feel like this goes without saying but I’m saying it anyway just in case…the aim is to expand the array without losing any data.
Intel was kind enough to post instructions on what you wish to do, although this guide is for the BIOS level raid configurator (which might be exclusive to their hardware raid? so I’m 100% sure how applicable this is to consumer level RST) as opposed to the RST application in Windows, which presumably is the similar: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000007571/server-products/sasraid.html
my .02 cents on this:
Raid expansion on this kind of setup is a very dangerous procedure to do; I’d expect it to take 1-7 days of constant rebuilding to accomplish (depending on how much the drives are used for non rebuilding tasks), and if power was lost at any point during this rebuild there is a good chance the whole array would become corrupted.
If you did decide to do this capacity expansion ensure that you have a current backup of the data beforehand.
I think I did a rebuild with RST like 15-20 years ago and it worked, but I was super nervous the whole time it was rebuilding. It is fairly simply in terms of operations, its just they take so long to complete. No need for a specific amount of free space on the drive prior to operation. You’ll be able to use the array while it’s doing it’s online expansion, but it will slow down the expansion activities som.
7 days is really long, might be quicker to backup the array, recreate and restore the data at that rate. Thanks for the article, I’d seen it but didn’t go through it because it just looked so old! …I’m trying to source a backup drive before I do anything else. I mean you’ve experienced this before so if you say it’s dangerous then I believe you completely.
Anyway my array is full so I bought 1x ST8000NT001 (ST8000NE0004 seems to be an older model I can’t find anywhere) to add to my array. From what I’ve gleaned the process is: