Originally posted by: cyberock
I have an Asus P4P800 motherboard setup with a Raid, I think it's Raid 1, where my drives duplicate each other. I'm thinking about upgrading my hard drives from 80GB to 160GB. I was wondering what would happen if I unplug one drive and replace it with the 160GB drive. Will it replicate itself to it? If so, after that is done, can I unplug the other one and replace it with a 160GB drive and then be back in a RAID with two 160GB? Just wondering if I will have some strange affects? Will this work? Will I have 160GB or will it cause the drives to only read at 80GB? Thanks!
ASSUMING the RAID controller on your motherboard supports this (and you should RTFM first!), you should be able to do the following:
1) Start with a 2-Disk RAID1 (two 80GB drives).
2) Remove one of the 80GB drives, and replace it with a 160GB drive.
3) Rebuild your array (this may be automatic, or you may have to do it manually. Now you have a functional 80GB RAID1, with 80GB of wasted space on the 160GB drive.
4) Remove the other 80GB drive, and replace it with an identical 160GB drive.
5) Rebuild your array again. Now you have a functional 80GB RAID1 with 80GB of wasted space on each drive.
6) 'Expand' your array up to 160GB. Now you have a 160GB RAID1 without losing any data. Note that not all RAID controllers support this option!
Alternatively, you could back your entire array up onto another drive (or DVD/tape/whatever), set up a blank 160GB RAID1 array with the new disks, and then copy the 80GB of data from the original RAID array onto the new one (Norton Ghost is good for this kind of thing).