I'm running WinXP on a RAID5 with 3 250G SATA drives.
I'd like to replace them with 3 1TB SATA drives.
windows is installed on the RAID -- there's no other system disk (and there's room for only 3 drives in the computer)
it's an intel matrix raid controller.
Is there a way of going about this without copying all data to an external drive, installing windows and all apps on the new RAID, then putting data on new RAID?
can I replace one of the drives and it'll just automatically rebuild the missing drive onto the new bigger drive? then repeat that process twice more?
would there be a problem when I replaced whichever drive has the MBR for the OS? How would I tell which one that is? How can I work around that problem?
If all that works, I'd end up wtih a RAID5 of 250G on the 1TB disks and a bunch of unallocated space, right? how do I go about expanding the raid volume from 250G to fill the disk?
is there some freeware that'll do all of this? or different freeware that'll do different parts? if not, is there some payware I should use?
thanks!
dan
I'd like to replace them with 3 1TB SATA drives.
windows is installed on the RAID -- there's no other system disk (and there's room for only 3 drives in the computer)
it's an intel matrix raid controller.
Is there a way of going about this without copying all data to an external drive, installing windows and all apps on the new RAID, then putting data on new RAID?
can I replace one of the drives and it'll just automatically rebuild the missing drive onto the new bigger drive? then repeat that process twice more?
would there be a problem when I replaced whichever drive has the MBR for the OS? How would I tell which one that is? How can I work around that problem?
If all that works, I'd end up wtih a RAID5 of 250G on the 1TB disks and a bunch of unallocated space, right? how do I go about expanding the raid volume from 250G to fill the disk?
is there some freeware that'll do all of this? or different freeware that'll do different parts? if not, is there some payware I should use?
thanks!
dan