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I have a dell PowerEdge 2950 with perc 6/i running raid1, there were 2 250GB drives in which have been replaced (one at a time) with 1TB drives.

So now I have the a virtual disk that is 232.25GB and 698.75GB (Free) that I would like to extend/reconfigure the virtual drive to utilize.

From what I understand my plan was to do the following:

  • Take a full backup. DONE!
  • Replace the drives one by one and wait for a rebuild to complete. DONE!
  • Use Dell OpenManage Server Administrator to extend the size of the physical RAID 1 volume on the disk from 232.25GB to full 1TB, using the reconfigure option Here is where I'm running into an issue
  • Extend the partitions in Windows...

When running the Reconfigure it only has Raid0 as an option with the 464.50GB min/max Listed... I am not sure whats going on here.

Here are screens of the options: omsareconfig

Any help getting this sorted would be greatly appreciated!

mzhaase
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Alex Szymanowski
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  • This is exactly why I hate non-standardized hardware raids. I ran into this issue before (on a Windows Server 2008 I didn't install) and it wasn't possible to resize the RAID 1 with the Dell software (which I find is ridiculous). I read some guides on it but found no solution that didn't have the possibiliy of complete data loss. In the end I ended up with a new install. Check this out: https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28446937/Expanding-a-RAID-1-on-Dell-poweredge-resize-partitions-OpenManage-Open-Manage.html – Broco Sep 22 '16 at 15:35
  • I agree that it's ridiculous not to have this capability - thankfully this limitation was short-lived. That old PERC model only supported expansion via adding spindles, but the H700 and newer all support expansion to free disk space as you were wanting to do. – JimNim Sep 23 '16 at 12:50

1 Answers1

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It is not possible to directly expand the virtual disk with a perc6. Double check your backup and if it is fine, you can:

  • Delete the virtual disk
  • Create a new virtual disk, using RAID 1
  • Do not initialize the disk
  • Do not set advanced options

It should have all of the space available now with your old data intact.

mzhaase
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  • I'm assuming since the raid VD contains the OS I will need to bring the Machine down and do the delete and recreation in the raid BIOS? Since the machine would crash if this was attempted in OMSA no? I was under the impression that the PERC 6/i could do this from everything I read. – ZombieDood Sep 22 '16 at 17:11