Drive Expansion

Actually RAID10 doesn't exist.. But in reality RAID1+0 is usually refered to as RAID10..
I love RAID.. I've seen some really weird configs... RAID10 spread across multiple controllers.. A nightmare to configure.. Mostly done for performance reasons in heavy duty I/O applications..

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The issue would be with the data drives?............you could hotswap the mirrored drives, but you would have to rebuild the striped part of the array?

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Sort of yes. You first create 1 stripeset then mirror that stripeset.. If one drive fails you can rebuild the faulty stripeset using it's mirror.. Heck.. you can have 2 faulty drives.. As long as they're in the same stripeset..

[RAID Contr1]-----[Disk1]----[Disk3]
[RAID Contr2]-----[Disk2]----[Disk4]

Disk1+2 in RAID0 and Disk3+4 are the striped mirror of Disk1+2..

Both disk 1 and 2 can die without problems or dataloss. Same with 3 and 4.. But if 1 and 4 dies.. it's restoring your backup time!

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When you say "6 drives" I am guessing that you are talking the data drive side of the array?

Like mirrored = 2 x 300 + 2 x 300 = 600 total, and the two striped drives are 2 x 300 = 600?

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2x300 in RAID1 for OS.. 4x300 in RAID10 (1+0) for data.. makes 6 in total..

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Very interesting!............I have never met anyone who would pay for that

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It is expensive indeed.. OTOH drives aren't that expensive anymore.. And some applications can really benefit from the increased I/O throughput (sticking in a bigger cpu and/or more ram is useless in some cases).. while still maintaining fault tolerance...

Thanks for all of the responses. I decided that the picture is worth a thousand words idea was pretty good so I have attached a jpg of the Compaq Array Configuration Utility GUI for you to view. It actually says that this is RAID 1 +0 which is why I listed it that way. If that is not normally the correct way I just didn't know.

As far as hardware goes these are SCSI drives and this is a Compaq 5312 RAID controller card.

I have already rebuilt the data on the drives. In this case, Compaq admin docs say to remove one drive and insert the new drive. The controller will rebuild the data on that drive just like when you are replacing a defective drive. Once a drive is finished you can go ahead and replace the next one in the array. The controller and ACU recognized the extra space after the rebuild and allowed me to include the space into the array. My problem is in getting Window to allow me to increase the size of D:\

The decision about what type of RAID to use was made before I got the job. This is not something I am going to be changing.

I will also be adding another attachment which is the image of my disk manager. I don't if that will help or not but it seems a good idea.

Falcis
I am such a newbie I don't even think I qualify as a newbie.

Here is the disk manager