RAID 5 query

encephalopathy · 27 Oct 2008 at 13:18

i have a hardware raid card and want to create a raid 5 array

i have 3x500gb drives at the moment - can i create the array across these and fill it with data then add in a 4th drive as and when i get another? or will i have to rebuild the array when i add the final drive and lose all the data and start from scratch again

planning to run freenas off a cf card using a ide>cf adapter

thanks for any advice!

Imy · 27 Oct 2008 at 14:50

Depends if your card supports online capacity expansion.

encephalopathy · 27 Oct 2008 at 15:54

adaptec 2610 6 port sata raid card

* Intel Intelligent I/O processor
* 64MB Cache
* RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 and JBOD
* Online Capacity Expansion
* RAID Level Migration
* 48-bit LBA supports large drives & Multi Terabyte Arrays

looks like it does

thanks!

Zarf · 28 Oct 2008 at 16:46

Yep, online capacity expansion works like a charm

You'll probably want a UPS though as the process takes quite a few hours and i'm not sure how well it handles power interruptions once you start (guessing you're fine as long as you have a battery for write back caching, or are using write-through but i wouldn't want to test it)
My last capacity upgrade took the best part of 48 hours (going from 4*1TB samsungs to 5), yours will take a fraction of that time.