SSD replacement on PERC H710 Adapter

[ImNotDeadYet]

A Dell server has a single 100gig SSD for the OS drive and a raid array of large HDD's for data storage. I want to replace the 100gig SSD with a 400gig SSD(dell).

Traditionally I would yank the 100gig, clone it, then pop in the 400gig but I'm wondering if there is a way to do this utilizing the PERC controller features without downtime.

It would seem I could hot swap install the 400 gig drive, configure it to increase the capacity of the OS drive via the PERC admin software, then configure the 100 gig to be subtracted. Am I approaching this the right way? Teach me! Thank you.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Depending on the BIOS and version of your h710, there hopefully will be a "reconfigure" option in there to convert your existing solo disk to a RAID 1 with a newly introduced disk...without any destruction/loss of data. Not a feature seen on lower end RAID controllers, only mid and higher end...which the h710 is middle.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Adding...it will only use 100 gigs of the 400 gig drive at first..when you RAID 1 different sized drives, the RAID only uses the capacity of the smaller drive, on the larger drive...so you'll have 300 gigs wasted. But when you "break the mirror"...I believe that RAID controller supports "online expansion"...when you can have it suck up the 300 gigs and add it to the existing 100 gigs. You will then see the disk free space in Disk Mangler in Windows Server.

 

[ImNotDeadYet]

It does have reconfigure. It also has replace member disk. I don't want to 'merge' the two other than to migrate because I feel it would double the chance of failure. I could potentially then expand the partition in windows once complete. Screenshot attached. Thank you my friend.

 

[ImNotDeadYet]

Does anyone know what the standard procedure would be in this case to replace a non raid SSD on the Perc 710? I suppose my concern is if I pull the existing drive, clone to the new one using another box, pop the new one in... will it boot or will I need to 'initialize' the drive in the Perc utility and possible wipe the new drive?

I'm guessing there is some normal procedure here but I don't seem to be finding much for documentation.

Much appreciated,
Ryan

 

[Markverhyden]

As long as it's not a member of any RAID group you should be able to just image it and swap.