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Restoring an Image from a RAID 5 Configuration using different Harddrives

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Greetings!

Hello,

I got a question please, in our plants, we have DELL Poweredge R710 Servers with PERCi6 Controller. Right now it is configured with 3x 500GB (NL SAS) Hard Drives in a RAID 5 Configuration. But currently it's hard to find 500GB Drives, the next size is 1TB. I am wondering if I can replace all the 500GB Hard Drives into 1TB and restore the image to it? Does the Array still see it as a 500GB drives since the image is from a 3x 500GB drives? or the Acronis software will automatically set it as 3x 1TB Drives? Do I need a special Acronis Tool? I am always taking the entire server image using the Acronis bootable CD.

I am using Acronis True Image 2011.

Please help,

Thank you very much

 

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Hello Ismael,

Please see KB document: 18255: Acronis True Image Home 2011: Disk and Partition Recovery as a starting point for your actions.

Given that you can create an offline backup image of your RAID5 array using the Acronis bootable CD, then Acronis can see your array as a single drive without needing to know anything about RAID5, which is important as this is a Home user product and not intended for use in a business server environment.

I am not an expert on RAID but from doing some searches on Google, the recommended method for doing what you want would appear to be as follows:

Create a full backup image of your existing 500GB RAID array to an external backup drive.

Remove the existing 3 x 500GB drives and replace with 3 x 1TB drives.

Rebuild the RAID5 array for the new disk size.

Restore the Acronis backup image to the new RAID5 array and take the option during restore to resize the backup to fit the new disk size.

The benefit of this approach is that you still have the 3 x 500GB original drives that can be used for recovering to your current state should anything go wrong.

Perhaps one of my more knowledgeable colleagues will add further comments for you to this post.

Steve's information seems sound.  

The hardware PERC controller actually houses the RAID configruation, not the drives in this cas.  As long as you have a good, full disk backup, you should be able to take the system offline, break the RAID, replace all drives with something bigger and recreate the RAID 5 on the PERC controller at the bios level.  

Once the RAID is configured with thew newer drives, then boot to the Acronis bootable Recovery media and it should see it as a single drive.  You'd then restore the entire disk image and all should be well at next boot.  If for some reason, when you restore, the drive size still only shows 500Gb in Windows, you should be able to go into Windows computer management and extend the drive capacity out to the full amount.  However, as Steve mentioned, if you select the option to restore the image not as the original, but automatically, it should already show up as the larger disk capacity.

Alternatively, if you space is not an issue, but you need to replace a single 500Gb drive at some point, but can't find a 500Gb at a decent price anymore, you can install a larger disk (as long as you only do 1 at a time and allow the RAID to repair itself from a degraded state each time) .  The down size would be that you'd still only have the same size RAID in the end, essentially wasting the extra space, but with less possible risk (although you should be fine as long as you have a good full image - I'd recommend taking a full offline image just before you do anything so you have the most current data and an offline image limits the chances of backup issues since there is no ongoing OS processes, applications, etc. to contend with).  

 

Thank you very much, I really appreciate it. I will try you recommendations. And will let you know,

Thanks again,