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RAID Arrays - Can You Only Migrate to Larger Capacities?

statman1statman1 Registered User new member
in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
I made the mistake of using one too many drives and my current RAID 5 array consists of 9 drives. (16TB)
I'm hoping to migrate this to 8 drives yielding a 14TB RAID5 array. A Sans Digital support engineer told me today that you can only migrate to same capacity or larger.
If the data is only filling half the present array, why is it not possible to migrate from 9 t 8 drives?

Any references to "10 Rules of RAID" or something covering this concern would be greatly appreciated.

Posts

  • BigityBigity Lubbock, TXRegistered User regular
    edited June 2013
    He's right, but I sure cant recall exactly why. Probably has to do with striping.

    Could you not just set up the new array and copy the stuff via slow boat in Windows or whatever OS?

    Bigity on
  • JimboJimbo down underRegistered User regular
    It is probably something to do with the parity data.

    404 not found
  • DelmainDelmain Registered User regular
    It is because of the parity data and striping together. The striping pattern will be different with 9 drives instead of 8. And no, the only real way to do it would be transferring the data to a temporary storage location, then removing the 9th drive and recreating the RAID, then moving it back.

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