[PLUG] Increasing a hardware RAID size and growing a Linux filesystem

Aaron Burt aaron at speakeasy.org
Tue Nov 18 09:55:02 UTC 2003


On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 09:34:47PM -0800, Matt Alexander wrote:
> I would like to add a few additional disks to an existing harware RAID
> array.  The Adaptec controller should handle this fine for me,

Wow.  I've never seen a RAID controller that'll add discs to an existing
array without destroying the data.  The Adaptecs I used at my last job
wouldn't do this.  In your shoes, I'd plan the job assuming the data
will be destroyed and back it up before starting.  If I don't have to
restore, then the job's done sooner than expected.

> but what effect would this have on a Linux ext3 filesystem that's
> currently using the array?  I'm assuming the Linux filesystem will
> only know about what it had previously been formatted to use. 

Correct.  

> Or will things crash and burn?  If things don't die, is it possible to
> resize the Linux partition to use the new additional space? 

Yup.  Others have mentioned resize2fs.

> Or do I need to copy the data elsewhere, rebuild the filesystem at the
> larger size, and copy the data back?

Even if you think you don't have to, plan on doing that.  Have a viable,
tested backup, and enough downtime to use it.  Which is a good idea in
any case.  

Big fat IDE discs are cheap, compared to downtime and lost data.

-- 
An adventure is what you get when things don't go right.  Y'all can keep
your "adventure tourers", I'll keep riding my "dual sport".
 -- Dean Woodward




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