I have a 112GB Linux-SW RAID-5 array on 4x40GB Seagate Barracuda ATA IV IDE disks that is currently ok but is low on free space. There is no raid-spare drive.
I am not using LVM and the FS is IBMs JFS. The OS is Linux RH9 with a kernel.org kernel 2.4.22-pre2. The IDE controller is an motherboard Promise 20276.
I have a spare 40G partition on my system (physical) drive and am thinking of adding it to the array.
I am aware of "raidreconf" being able to resize a raid array, but it's reportedly _very_ slow, is still beta, and the backup-before rule applies. However backing up and/or restoring is also very slow and error-prone because it's to multiple 12GB (DDS3) DAT tapes using "tar" (JFS has no "dump"). I am aware what LVM is but have little experience of it and have been wary of using it together with raid. My reason for using raid is to improve the reliability of my data.
Q1: What is the usual [ideal] strategy for adding space to a raid-5 disk array?
Q2: Has anyone experienced resizing JFS file systems using LVM: is it stable?
Q3: What should I do from here?
Q4: <afterthought> I could leave the spare 40G partition for array hot-spare -- would that be a Good Thing(TM)?
Thanks
Ruth
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