| 1 |
On Tuesday 09 February 2010 13:46:40 Stroller wrote: |
| 2 |
> On 9 Feb 2010, at 00:27, Neil Bothwick wrote: |
| 3 |
> > On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 14:34:01 -0600, Paul Hartman wrote: |
| 4 |
> >> Thanks for the info everyone, but do you understand the agony I am |
| 5 |
> >> now |
| 6 |
> >> suffering at the fact that all disk in my system (including all parts |
| 7 |
> >> of my RAID5) are starting on sector 63 and I don't have sufficient |
| 8 |
> >> free space (or free time) to repartition them? :) |
| 9 |
> > |
| 10 |
> > With the RAID, you could fail one disk, repartition, re-add it, |
| 11 |
> > rinse and |
| 12 |
> > repeat. But that doesn't take care of the time issue. |
| 13 |
> |
| 14 |
> Aren't you thinking of LVM, or something? |
| 15 |
> |
| 16 |
> Stroller. |
| 17 |
> |
| 18 |
|
| 19 |
Not sure where LVM would fit into this, as then you'd need to offload the data |
| 20 |
from that PV (Physical Volume) to a different PV first. |
| 21 |
|
| 22 |
With Raid (NOT striping) you can remove one disk, leaving the Raid-array in a |
| 23 |
reduced state. Then repartition the disk you removed, repartition and then re- |
| 24 |
add the disk to the array. |
| 25 |
Wait for the rebuild to complete and do the same with the next disk in the |
| 26 |
array. |
| 27 |
Eg: (for a 3-disk raid5): |
| 28 |
1) remove disk-1 from raid |
| 29 |
2) repartition disk-1 |
| 30 |
3) add disk-1 as new disk to raid |
| 31 |
4) wait for the synchronisation to finish |
| 32 |
5) remove disk-2 from raid |
| 33 |
6) repartition disk-2 |
| 34 |
7) add disk-2 as new disk to raid |
| 35 |
8) wait for the synchronisation to finish |
| 36 |
9) remove disk-3 from raid |
| 37 |
10) repartition disk-3 |
| 38 |
11) add disk-3 as new disk to raid |
| 39 |
12) wait for the synchronisation to finish |
| 40 |
|
| 41 |
(These steps can easily be adapted for any size and type of raid, apart from |
| 42 |
striping/raid-0) |
| 43 |
|
| 44 |
I do, however, see a potential problem, if you repartition starting from |
| 45 |
sector 64 instead of from sector 63, the disk has 1 sector less, which means |
| 46 |
4KB less in size. |
| 47 |
The Raid-array may not accept the re-partitioned disk back into the array |
| 48 |
because it's not big enough for the array. |
| 49 |
|
| 50 |
I had this issue with an older system once where I replaced a dead 80GB (Yes, |
| 51 |
I did say "old" :) ) with a new 80GB drive. This drive was actually a few KB |
| 52 |
smaller in size and the RAID would refuse to accept it. |
| 53 |
|
| 54 |
-- |
| 55 |
Joost Roeleveld |
Archives