Comments on: Howto: Increase disk space in a mdadm raid http://h3x.no/2010/03/02/howto-increase-disk-space-in-a-mdadm-raid Tor Henning Ueland`s thoughts about technology and other stuff Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:33:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Tor Henning Ueland http://h3x.no/2010/03/02/howto-increase-disk-space-in-a-mdadm-raid/comment-page-1#comment-59863 Tor Henning Ueland Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:23:25 +0000 http://h3x.no/?p=288#comment-59863 RAID5 will never use more than one disk as spare, if you want more spare disks you need to go towards RAID6. (A RAID5 can be converted without any problem). You could also consider using hot spare disks but they will not be taken into the RAID before a disk actually dies. But you can in theory add a new disk to the RAID5 and simply dont expand the partition, and then remove the extra disk again afterwards. Note that i have not tried this myself. (I have tried expanding and changing a RAID5 to 6) RAID5 will never use more than one disk as spare, if you want more spare disks you need to go towards RAID6. (A RAID5 can be converted without any problem). You could also consider using hot spare disks but they will not be taken into the RAID before a disk actually dies.

But you can in theory add a new disk to the RAID5 and simply dont expand the partition, and then remove the extra disk again afterwards. Note that i have not tried this myself. (I have tried expanding and changing a RAID5 to 6)

]]> By: Ad http://h3x.no/2010/03/02/howto-increase-disk-space-in-a-mdadm-raid/comment-page-1#comment-59857 Ad Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:14:48 +0000 http://h3x.no/?p=288#comment-59857 Hi, Just a thought because I'm about to go through this process: Assuming your machine supported another physical drive, would it make sense & would it be possible to add extra drives to the array and resynchronizing BEFORE removing any of the original drives? That way you're never running on less than two disks so there's less chance of something going wrong. Rob Hi,
Just a thought because I’m about to go through this process: Assuming your machine supported another physical drive, would it make sense & would it be possible to add extra drives to the array and resynchronizing BEFORE removing any of the original drives? That way you’re never running on less than two disks so there’s less chance of something going wrong.

Rob

]]>