As we ran out of disk space on our server, we needed to install an extra disk in our server.
The DELL server has a PERC 4e/DI controller and the 3 disks of 72 GB which are configured in RAID-5.
We use W2K3 as operating system.
So we ordered an extra 72 GB and got it a week later in a big box ...
The only documentation that came with it stated that the initialization of the disk could take very long.
To make a long story short, we followed the following steps successfully:
- Shutdown the server
- Add the new 72 GB SCSI disk in the first free bay
- Start the server
- Goto My Computer - Manage - Disk Management (Dell OpenManage Array Manager)
Arrays - Perc Subsystem 1 - Perc 4e/DI Controller
-->Backplane
---->We see a new "Array Disk 0:3"
--> Virtual Disk
----> We see Array Disk 0:0 , 0:1 and 0:2
-> Array Group 0 : Aha ... We see that the reconfiguration process is busy - After about 4 hours waiting, the Events tab shows following entries:
a. at 4:22 PM: .... RAID-5, 136.48 GB ..... 204.73 GB .... started
b. at 6:21 PM: .... reconfiguration completed
c. at 6:25 PM: ... background initialization started
d. at 8:04 PM: ... background initialization completed
So, it took about 3 hours 45 minutes to complete the whole process - Reboot the server (this step is very important !)
- Check "Disk Management" - Disk 0 : 68.25 Unallocated
