Can you assist - not a technical background but can learn! - our ML370 G5 has a P400 controller (with battery/512) and is configured Raid 6 ADG with 4 disks. They were originally all 72gb, but due to failures 2 are now 146gb! Array is partitioned C (system) 50gb which has 12.5gb free, E (Exchange server) 43gb which has 27gb free, and F Data 43gb which has 5gb free. I want to expand the data partition. I have bought a new matching 146gb disk & it is hot swap so easy to configure. However, although I can see that I can add it to teh array, creating a 5 disk array & gaining I think just 72gb?, then can combine the spare space to the F partition using Diskpart.exe?, it did occur to me that if I swapped one of the old 72gb out for the new disk & then also bought another 146gb disk to swap the final 72gb out, I would then have a 4 disk array all of 146gb!, and I think that with each swap out it will rebuild on the new disk in the same way as if you have a disk failure? Then the small disks will be used as spare non-critical space on a new array.
Question though is, (a) which is the better option?, and (b) if I swap out the disks, it rebuilds, but will teh "spare" space then become available to extend the array & which partitions can it be used on? (I think diskpart.exe just adds to the end of the partitions? OS is SBS 2003 R2.
Thanks!