Tim Nikias wrote:
> 
> Well, if I'd just exchange one HD with the bigger one, my Raid 
> controller would exclaim that the Raid broke and would offer me to 
> mirror the functional (small) HD onto the new, bigger and empty one. 
> That's what Raid 1 is supposed to do.
> Then, I exchange the functional small HD, in effect letting the 
> controller believe that, yet again, one HD failed, and mirrors the first 
> HD onto the second.
> Voila! 250GB worth of Data mirrored onto 500GB.
> Final step: Just partition the remaining, unused 250GB. The controller 
> is a hardware one and acts as if only one HD is attached to the PC, so 
> in theory, that should work.
> But I'll look into that tomorrow, I guess. :-)
> 

I would expect the results that you just posted - that after swapping 
all of the drives you would still have a 250GB mirror and the other 
250GB is unused.

If you were using purely software RAID you would likely be able to do 
what you want - depending on the OS.

But hardware or firmware RAID - I think you might run into trouble.


In my experience most RAID controllers will allow only 1 RAID partition 
on which you can create your normal partitions - like you have now.

forgive the format
the OS sees the marked parts
A normal drive may be set up like this - forgive the format
<drive><part><data></data></part><part><data></data></part></drive>
        ****************************************************


A hardware raid setup may look like this
<drive><RAID><part><data></data></part><part><data></data></part></RAID></drive>
              ****************************************************


your situation may very well be this
<drive><RAID><part><data></data></part></RAID><space>250GB</space></drive>
              **************************


Unless your RAID controller is designed specifically to do so, it cannot 
expand the RAID to the entire drive - nor can it create a second RAID 
section at the end of the drive.


You may be able to get it to work using Linux, but that can take a lot 
of time only to find that it didn't work.  Running NTFS may complicate 
this to being non feasible.  At any rate, the effort to do this may be 
more than reinstalling the OS.


Just in case you want to try, here's a rough outline - it's Linux heavy.
It's unproven in this context, but I use something very similar to keep 
expanding our linux server storage with limited drive bays, controllers 
and resources.

Set up one 500GB drive as a RAID 1 drive (the entire space)
Run the other 500GB drive as is (250GB data, 250GB space)
Run Linux and be able to see and work with both drives.
Setup a partition on the entire 500GB array.
Get logical volumes running.
set up the 250GB partition as a LV.
Add the 500GB space to the LV.
tell LV to stop using the 250GB patition.
	it will mirror all data to the 500 GB partition.
expand the filesystem - GParted works nice.
try it out
if it works, try *rebuilding* the 500GB array.


Again, with Windows and NTFS, this may be near impossible as linux and 
NTFS are not best of friends.





Your controller may offer more than one RAID partition per HD, but I've 
found that this usually is a special feature that a few controllers 
offer - and when it is offered, it is advertised.

In fact, the only RAID controllers that I have run across have been 
Intel's ICH series that offer Matrix storage - but I have not done a 
search for the feature, only run across it while building a new PC. 
This is a nice feature and I currently have it in use - I have 2 HDs - 
one part is RAID1 for protection - another is RAID0 for mass storage of 
junk.




Best of luck!


Tom

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