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Paul Hinett
Asked: 2010-11-04 10:45:15 +0800 CST

RAID6 setup - adding additional drives

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I want to setup a dedicated server. To begin with we need a minimum of 8TB. I believe I can begin with 6x2TB drives in a RAID6 setup to achieve this.

Now when I need to increase this capacity to 10TB. I should be able to add a single 2TB disk to the array.

But is it as simple as just adding another disk. Will I lose any data from my existing drives?

hard-drive raid raid6

2 Answers

  1. Your math works out, but take into account that a 2TB drive doesn't deliver 2TB raw, it will be 1.8 or 1.7 so you may need 7 x 2TB drives to get that 8TB usable number.

    That being said, a good controller should be able to expand the logical unit to include the new drives, but you'll have to look at the capabilities of the controller. Also keep in mind that your partition inside that logical unit won't expand automatically, you may have to do this after the fact. I'd suggest some kind of logical volume manager like LVM, EVMS, or if this is Windows perhaps set it as a dynamic disk.

    Test, test, test, and more testing.

    Tom

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  2. Well you don't mention how you're going to build this R6 array (i.e. via hardware controller? if so which one, of if by software then which OS/version) - but generally you can add extra disks to R6 arrays but I couldn't confirm without these details.

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