Adaptec 2810SA OCE question

[jhh]

Hi,

finally built my array yesterday. It was a while ago since I actually opened a PC but it went quite nicely.

I used three out of four drives to build the array as I wanted to test the OCE before I actually need it. I cleared the array and then initialized the drive in XP and formatted it. I started worrying a bit at that point - would I need a utility to resize partitions after they had been created? And would that be reliable on a raid array rather than a single drive?

I checked the MS knowledge base and found some articles on OCE as it appears it has to be supported by the OS but they did not refer to XP. Any idea if this can be accomplished on XP home?

Thanks,
Jan

[Blue]

I have a 2810SA, but I'm not sure I understand your question. I'll take a guess that you want to expand the array with the 4th drive?

If so, make sure the Adaptec Storage Manager software is up-to-date. I noticed that older versions do not have the "initialize" command, which is what you'll need to do first with that 4th drive.

Then, according to Adaptec support:

To initiate Array Expansion in Storage Manager, switch to the Logical
View, highlight the array in question, then click "Expand Array Group"
and select the new drive(s) to be added to the array.

(I don't recall the exact process, as I don't have access to Storage Manager at the moment - so this will have to do for now.)

**Note that expansion will take a long, long time (about 24 hours on my system). Also, it would be very wise to backup your data before starting this process.

Once the array is expanded, you can go into Computer Management (Disk Management) and verify that the process was successful.

[jhh]

Yes - I wanted to add the fourth drive to test if it was reliable. I'm trying to figure out if I can postpone buying the next 4 drives as the card can take 8 drives.

I was a bit worried as in MS KB WinXP was not explicitly mentioned.

Jan

[Blue]

OCE is a capability of the 2810SA and is accomplished through Adaptec Storage Manager. The Microsoft Knowledge Base probably wouldn't know anything about the card and this process. According to Adaptec, Windows XP Home is supported by the 2810SA. I use XP Pro, so I'm not sure if OCE works any differently under XP Home.

The free Adaptec support is pretty good though, at least in my experience. They responded to me within 24 hrs.

Just don't forget that OCE will only work if the newer drives are either exactly the same size as the smallest drive in your array, or larger. If it's even a few bytes smaller, OCE may not work.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jhh

would I need a utility to resize partitions after they had been created?

Yes, you'll need something like Acronis Disk Director to resize the partition.

[jeff_d]

I have a Raidcore card that supports OCE. I tested it out and I had to run the command line utility diskpart for XP to resize the partition.....It was painless though.

[src666]

Just to be clear, OCE increases the size of the base volume, but does not affect the size of the OS's partition. Once you have increased the base volume size, you can then either use either a utility or a feature of the OS to increase the partition size, or create a new partition on the unused space.

[jhh]

Hi all,

thanks for replying - info was as usual on this forum helpful and to the point - I was hoping there was an OS native utility. The diskpart is available for XP home but a diskpart /? did not help too much. I'll try to find some more information on this or will go for 3rd party partition resizing.

The Adaptec Storage manager part seems to be quite straightforward.

Jan

[jeff_d]

Here's Microsoft's KB article about diskpart: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590.