Promise Technology M500f Partition and Format the Logical Drive, RAID Level Migration, Add Lose

VTrak M-Class Product Manual

The spare drive effectively takes the place of the failed drive and the RAID system immediately begins to rebuild data onto the drive. When the rebuild is complete, the disk array is returned to fault tolerant status.

VTrak includes a function that enables you to return a hot spare drive from a disk array back to spare status. When you create the hot spare drive, check the Revertible box to enable this feature. See “Transition” on page 258.

See also “Critical & Offline Disk Arrays” on page 286.

Partition and Format the Logical Drive

Like any other type of fixed disk media in your system, a RAID logical drive must also be partitioned and formatted before use. Use the same method of partitioning and formatting on an logical drive as you would any other fixed disk.

Depending on the operating system you use, there may or may not be various capacity limitations applicable for the different types of partitions.

RAID Level Migration

To migrate a disk array is to do one or both of the following:

•Change its RAID level

•Increase the number of disk drives (sometimes called Expansion)

Migration takes place on an existing Functional disk array without disturbing the existing data. While the disk array is migrating, you can access the data as before. When migration is complete, your disk array will have a different RAID level and/or a larger capacity.

Different types of disk arrays use different organizational models and have varying benefits. The following outline breaks down the properties for each type of RAID supported by Promise products.

From	To	Increase		Redundancy
		Capacity	Performance	Add	Lose
RAID 50	RAID 10	•
	RAID 5		•
	RAID 0	•	•		•
RAID 10	RAID 50	•
	RAID 5	•
	RAID 0	•	•		•

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