Last I check expanding drives (reshaping the RAID) in a raid set within Windows is not supported. Significant size is relative I guess, but 4-8 terabytes will not be a problem in either OS. I run a RAID 6 (Windows does not support this either last I checked). I started out with 5 drives and have reshaped it to ten drives now. I have a few 250G (old original drives) and many 500G drives (added and replacement drives) in the set. Once all the old 250G die off and I replace them with 500G drives I will grow the RAID to the size of its new smallest disk, 500G. Grow and Reshape are slightly different, both supported in Linux mdadm. I have tested both with succcess. I too use my set for media and it is not in use 90% of the time. I use put this line in my /etc/rc.local to put the drives to sleep after a specified min of inactivity; hdparm -S 241 /dev/sd* The values for the -S switch are not intuitive, read the man page. The value I use (241) put them to standby (spindown) after 30min. My OS is on EIDE and my RAID set is all SATA, hence the splat for all SATA drives. I have been running this for a year now with my RAID set. It works great and I have had no problems with mdadm waiting on drives to spinup when I access them. The one caveat, be prepared to wait a few moments if the are all in spindown state before you can access your data. For me with ten drives, it is always less than a minute, usually 30sec or so. For a filesystem, I use XFS for my large media files. Dan. ----- Inline Message Follows ----- To: linux-raid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx From: greenjelly Subject: Software based SATA RAID-5 expandable arrays? I am researching my option to build a Media NAS server. Sorry for the long message, but I wanted to provide as much details as possible to my problem, for the best solution. I have Bolded sections as to save people who don't have the time to read all of this. Option 1: Expand My current Dream Machine! I could buying a RAID-5 Hardware card for my current system (vista ultimate 64 with a extreme 6800 and 1066mb 2 gig RAM). The Adaptec RAID controller (model "3805", you can search NewEgg for the infomation) will cost me near $500 (consume 23w) and support 8 drives (I have 6). This controller contains a 800mhz processor with a large cache of memory. It will support expandable RAID-5 array! I would also buy a 750w+ PSU (for the additional safety and security). The drives in this machine would be placed in shock absorbing (noise reduction) 3 slot 4 drive bay containers with fans ( I have 2 of these) and I will be removing a IDE based Pioneer DVD Burner (1 of 3) because of its flaky performance given the p965 intel chip set lack of native IDE support and thus the Motherboards Micron SATA to IDE device. Ive already installed 4 drives in this machine (on the native MB SATA controller) only to find a fan fail on me within days of the installation. One of the drives went bad (may or may not have to do with the heat). There are 5mm between these drives, and I would now replace both fans with higher RPM ball baring fans for added reliability (more noise). I would also need to find a Freeware SMART monitor software which at this time I can not find for Vista, to warn me of increased temps due to failure of fan, increased environmental heat, etc. The only option is commercial SMART monitoring software (which may not work with the Adaptec RAID adapter. Option 2: Build a server. I have a copy of Windows 2003 server, which I have yet to find out if it supports native software expandable RAID-5 arrays. I can also use Linux (which I have very little experience with) but have always wanted to use and learn. To do either of the last two options, I would still need to buy a new power supply for my current VISTA machine (for added reliability). The current PSU is 550w and with a power hungry RADEON, 3 DVD Drives and a X-Fi sound card... My nerves are getting frayed. I would buy a cheap motherboard, processor and 1gig or less of RAM. Lastly I would want a VERY large Case. I have a 7300 NVidia PCI card that was replaced with a X1950GT on my Home Theater PC so that I may play back HD/Blue Ray DVD's. The server option may cost a bit more then the $500 for the Adaptec Raid controller. This will only work if Linux or Windows 2003 supports my much needed requirements. My Linux OS will be installed on a 40mb IDE Drive (not part of the Array). The options I seek are to be able to start with a 6 Drive array RAID-5 array, then as my demand for more space increases in the future I want to be able to plug in more drives and incorporate them into the Array without the need to backup the data. Basically I need the software to add the drive/drives to the Array, then Rebuild the array incorporating the new drives while preserving the data on the original array. QUESTIONS Since this is a media server, and would only be used to serve Movies and Video to my two machines It wouldn't have to be powered up full time (My Music consumes less space and will be contained on two seperate machines). Is there a way to considerably lower the power consumption of this server the 90% of time its not in use? Can Linux support Drive Arrays of Significant Sizes (4-8 terabytes)? Can Linux Software support RAID-5 expandability, allowing me to increase the number of disks in the array, without the need to backup the media, recreate the array from scratch and then copy the backup to the machine (something I will be unable to do)? I know this is a Linux forum, but I figure many of you guys work with Windows Server. If so does Windows 2003 provide the same support for the requested requirements above? Thanks GreenJelly -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Software-based-SATA-RAID-5-expandable-arrays--tf3937421.html#a11167521 Sent from the linux-raid mailing list archive at Nabble.com. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
