On 7/5/07, acostoya <adrian@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I've being trying to set a 6 disk RAID-5 for a few days but it took only 3 disks (the other 3 gave Device busy error); in the meantime, an old server went out of order so I have to use the incomplete host and it is now online with user files. The question is, is there a way to expand my RAID-5 from 3 disks to 6 disks without losing data?.
Yes, it's possible. A quick google of 'linux expand raid 5' turned up a bunch of hits, FYI. Since you already have the 3 disks added to the array as spares, all you should have to do is: mdadm --grow /dev/md0 --raid-devices=6 Watch /proc/mdstat for the expansion status. After it is complete, you need to expand your filesystem to utilize the new larger device. Keep in mind that most people recommend raid 6 for larger raid 5 arrays since the likelyhood of multiple device failures goes up significantly the more drives you have in your array. Unfortunately I don't think it is possible to convert a raid 5 array to raid 6. -Dave - 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
