Windows 2000 SBE - RAID5 question

[Arvetus]

I have a question on Raid5 on Windows 2000 SBE.

I have to replace some hard drives. There are currently (3) 9GB SCSI drives in a RAID5 configuration, configured as Drive D:\. I am upgrading to (3) 73GB SCSI drives.

My question is, do I just run like a full Windows Backup and back up the D:\ drive, replace the drives, format them, configure them for RAID5 and restore the backup? Or can I just replace the drives one at a time and let them populate themselves?

My concern is that this is the drive that the user folders are, along with the Exchange Server install.

Thanks for any assistance.

[jondercik]

Have to backup and restore

[Arvetus]

Will this cause any Exchange issues? I wouldn't think it would if it's a full disk backup, it should restore the folders and files exactly the same. But my experience with Exchange has been that sometimes it can be quite fussy about things like that.

[tguy]

I would replace one 9GB drive at a time with one 72 GB drive, let it rebuild completely then replace the 2nd and then 3rd.

It will not expand the drive partition but u will have the extra space available.

If you want to expand the partition you may want to look at utilities like Partition Magic, Ghost, diskpart.exe etc.

Good luck.

[chilifrei64]

Yeah.. I would insert them one by one and let them rebuild. Then repartition them using Partition Magic. (ServerMagic for Servers) If you do a backup then restore.. it kinda sounds like it is easy.. but you can run into complications...especially with Exchange