So Lets say that I have a server running on 4 hard drives... We have them in a RAID 10 setup and they are all 600GB. Now I take one of them out, then swap it physically with a 1.2TB HDD. In this circumstance, obviously the larger drive will be limited to the amount that its mirror/striping buddies have, but when I let the drive repopulate with data from the mirrored drive, then replace the mirror and let that repopulate on another 1.2TB, then I do the same with all of the other drives, will the RAID update to the larger size when the larger size is available on all drives, or will I need to just back it up from the 600GBs and shut everything down and flash it to the new ones? I know, its kinda a more advance question, but I am supposed to be updating my server storage space, and I have no idea if this shortcut would work or not. I dont want to waste company time trying it though unless it has a possibility of working.
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The responsible thing to do is shut down, image, test the image, build the new array, restore from the image, start up the new system.
However, if Windows / your RAID hardware (software?) will let you create a broken array, and if the array is split by drive, then you could conceivably:
- Image the system (this way you fall back to the better answer)
- Pull the correct two drives so that you effectively have a single RAID0 array (no redundancy)
- Add two larger drives (why 1.2TB when you can get much bigger?) in a new RAID10 array that is non-redundant (only 2 of 4 drives, effectively another RAID0)
- Image from smaller to larger.
- Pull the two older, smaller drives.
- Install two new, larger drives.
- Add the two new drives to the new array and have the system rebuild it.
That said, don't do it. It will be much easier to fall back to your original 4 disks if you don't play silly tricks. Presumably you have RAID10 for a reason, and part of that reason is reliability.
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