Way Way Off Topic.... but I am confident the knowledge base in thisgroup can likely help... Computer related

[Gary Emerson]

Ok, normally this is soaring, but I know there are a lot of really
capable computer folks who read this group and this item might actually
help some of the other folks out there in the future as well.

I have a Dell, set up with RAID 1. For those unaware, RAID 1 utilizes
two hard drives. The same data is simultaneously written to both hard
drives at the same time and is read from both hard drives at the same
time. The benefit of this is that should one drive "die" the second one
soldiers on and all you have to do is replace the dead drive and the
computer will automatically recreate a copy of the good drive and
therefore you have a full time backup.

Ok, when I ordered my dell, I got twin 160 Gigabyte drives. I've had a
couple of drive failures over the last couple of years and when the
drives failed I found it very inexpensive to buy 300 and 400 Gigabyte
drives. However, the computer still sees only 160 Gigabytes of usable
space.

I'm hoping that someone can offer a suggestion on how I can upsize the
available storage to take advantage of the actual storage area on the
two drives.

While I have a couple of thoughts as how to do this, I'll stop here and
not taint a clean thought process for those who know this best.

Keep in mind that I am prepared to not only buy an additional 400 Gig
drive so that both drives are 400's (keeping the 300 as a backup) and
I'm also happy to go buy a large USB drive in case having a separate
external drive is useful in this process.

I'm down to only 10 Gigs of usable space on the 160Gig original format,
so I need to tackle this problem sooner rather than later. I also have
an older (don't have the version handy) copy of Norton Ghost.

It probably isn't important, but the drives are SATA. I do not know if
I have any way to add another drive to the motherboard. I kind of
suspect I don't.

Many thanks

Gary

[Marc Ramsey[_2_]]

Gary Emerson wrote:
> Ok, when I ordered my dell, I got twin 160 Gigabyte drives. I've had a
> couple of drive failures over the last couple of years and when the
> drives failed I found it very inexpensive to buy 300 and 400 Gigabyte
> drives. However, the computer still sees only 160 Gigabytes of usable
> space.

RAID 1 always limits your capacity to the smallest drive in the pair.
So, if you want to continue using RAID 1 and increase capacity, you'll
need to replace both drives. By the way, RAID 1 does a decent job of
protecting against hard drive failures, but it will not protect against
Windows screwups, operator error, etc. Backups are still a good idea...

Marc

[noel.wade]

On Jun 19, 3:45*pm, Marc Ramsey > wrote:
> Gary Emerson wrote:
> > Ok, when I ordered my dell, I got twin 160 Gigabyte drives. *I've had a
> > couple of drive failures over the last couple of years and when the
> > drives failed I found it very inexpensive to buy 300 and 400 Gigabyte
> > drives. *However, the computer still sees only 160 Gigabytes of usable
> > space.
>
> RAID 1 always limits your capacity to the smallest drive in the pair.
> So, if you want to continue using RAID 1 and increase capacity, you'll
> need to replace both drives. *By the way, RAID 1 does a decent job of
> protecting against hard drive failures, but it will not protect against
> Windows screwups, operator error, etc. *Backups are still a good idea....
>
> Marc

Also, if you simply "clone" the drive or the RAID array with most
software, it will set the size of the new array or drive partition to
the old size.

If you've replaced both drives with a new (larger) set of disks (which
should be identical in a RAID 1 array), then you will probably need to
rebuild the array (or partition) to the larger size. Note that
rebuilding the array can destroy the data on it - this very much
depends on the software and tools you use to reconfigure the array.

Good luck, take care,

--Noel
(who's a RAID 5 kinda guy)

[Tuno]

I love this group!!!

A guy asks a question way off topic (being up front about it of
course) and gets great help. I tried to do the same thing on another
group last week and got flamed, roasted and skewered.

~ted/n2O

ps can anyone recommend a good commercial wiki product, for team
collaboration and internal C++ project documentation? :)

[brtlmj]

On Jun 19, 3:32 pm, Gary Emerson > wrote:
> Keep in mind that I am prepared to not only buy an additional 400 Gig
> drive so that both drives are 400's (keeping the 300 as a backup)

Good idea. Get a 400 GB drive, replace the 300 GB drive with it and
let the system rebuild the RAID. Keep the 300 GB disk safe - it will
prove invaluable if things go wrong.

Then, get a tool called Partition Magic. It is not very expensive - I
got it almost for free in a set with Norton Antivirus and Ghost. It
should indicate that you have one 160 GB partition and 240 GB of free
space. Either resize the partition or create a new one in the free
space (the safer option).

And you can add another drive to your system if you have a free PCI
slot and are willing to spend about $30 for a SATA controller.

Bartek

[DRN]

On Jun 19, 8:46 pm, Tuno > wrote:
> ps can anyone recommend a good commercial wiki product, for team
> collaboration and internal C++ project documentation? :)

Ted - Try MediaWiki (for collaboration) and Doxygen (for
internal documentation)...

[ContestID67]

On Jun 20, 1:53*pm, brtlmj > wrote:
>
> Then, get a tool called Partition Magic. It is not very expensive - I
> got it almost for free in a set with Norton Antivirus and Ghost. It
> should indicate that you have one 160 GB partition and 240 GB of free
> space. Either resize the partition or create a new one in the free
> space (the safer option).
>

I tried Partition Magic for a cloning exercise recently (to upgrade a
laptop from
one HD to a larger HD) and the tool didn't do the trick (though it has
worked perfectly
for expanding a partition and other functions). I then used Acronis
True Image
(http://www.acronis.com) which cloned perfectly. A fully functional
trial
copy can be downloaded from the web site. Highly recommended.

To repeat a common thread - have a really good backup before entering
these troubled waters.

Good Luck,
John DeRosa