I have a Dell PowerEdge R300 with a Dell SAS 6/iR Internal Controller RAID PCIe and two 250GB SATA HDDs in RAID1 configuration. One of the HDDs has died so I want to swap it out for another. At the same time I'd like to increase storage to 500 or 750GB. Can I just plug in say a 500GB HDD, wait for it to sync, then swap out the other old drive for another 500GB drive?
Or, how do I find out if this is possible – i.e. what's the terminology for this if I want to search around in manuals etc?
Also, I'm assuming that I can get any 3.5" SATA (or SATA II) drive and it'll work and be hot-pluggable. Is this correct?
many thanks!
Best Answer
The feature term you are looking for is "Online Capacity Extension". Dell SAS iR controllers do not support it, the PERC and CERC controllers do. So with the iR controller, you would have to insert your two new disks, create a new large container and copy the data over from the old one.
Basically yes, although controller-specific limitations may apply (like a 2TB volume limit). You should make sure that you use "24/7" rated drives - the appropriate models also usually come with larger caches, higher MTBF ratings and a longer manufacturer warranty (3 to 5 years).