Add disk to Intel ICH9R Raid-5 ?

kEiNsTeiN · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Germany

is it possible to add a disk to a raid5, built with the onboard fakeraid-chip of the intel-ich9r-chipset?
I didnt see any screenshots in my desired mainboard-manual.

I dont want to use that disk as a new sparse, but instead to grow the virtual disk, so I can grow the filesystem ontop of it.

kthxbai.

edit: fuck, wrong forum. plz move to something fitting... off the wall?
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Malvineous · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 9:54 am Post subject:

Most hardware RAID5 controllers are unable to expand the array to accommodate a new disk, so it's unlikely the ICH9R would be able to do it. I think the only way you'll be able to do this is to move all your data off the array, recreate it with the new disk and then copy all your data back again.

On the other hand if you were using Linux software RAID5 combined with LVM I *think* you'd be able to expand the array without losing it - but don't quote me on that ;-)

Linux software RAID will also probably be faster than fakeraid.

HeissFuss · Guru Joined: 11 Jan 2005 Posts: 414

Most real hardware raid controllers do allow for online raid-5 expansion. MDraid also supports online expansion. Even fakeraid NVRAID in Windows lets you expand. I'm not so sure about the Intel chipset raid though. Definitly not from Linux since the dmraid5 driver is barely functional. You may be able to expand from the BIOS controller menu. You should probably try it with a test array first, with some throwaway data on it.