Preparing For Online Capacity Expansion Under Windows 2000; About Capacity Expansion Under Windows 2000 - HP P3410A - NetRAID 1M RAID Controller Installation And Configuration Manual

Chapter 7
The formatted drive is now ready for use. Assume for this example that the drive
is now E: and was partitioned as a primary partition. The remaining virtual
storage space (500 GB minus 12 GB) must be left unpartitioned. You can write
data up to 12 GB on the drive. Windows NT will not allow you to write beyond
12 GB and lose any data.
Partition and Format a Drive that Contains Windows NT
Sometimes it is desirable to have the network operating system reside on a disk
array. The advantage is that the NOS resides on a redundant drive.
Virtual sizing can be used with a disk array that is used as the boot device and
contains user data. The key limitation is that Windows NT only allows a FAT
boot partition size of 4 GB or less.
If the NOS and data need to be on a single array (and single logical drive), and
you want to allow for capacity expansion, you must create multiple partitions.
1. Create a FAT boot partition of 4 GB or less for the NOS, which becomes
the C: volume.
2. Create a second partition for the data, which becomes, for example,
the D: volume.
3. The remaining virtual capacity must be left unpartitioned and is available
for future partitions as you add disk drives to the array.
Preparing for Online Capacity Expansion under
Windows 2000

About Capacity Expansion under Windows 2000

Normally, adding capacity requires shutting down the server to reconfigure or
restore an existing volume or to add the new storage space as a new volume.
Using the Online Capacity Expansion feature allows you to expand an existing
logical drive without shutting down the server.
The Online Capacity Expansion feature cannot be used if a logical drive spans
multiple arrays. Each array can contain only one logical drive. Reconstruction
(for the purposes of adding a drive to an existing array) can only be done on an
array having a single logical drive. It is also important to plan future storage
expansion into your installation. This will ensure that you can easily expand
capacity without backup/restore operations or reconfiguration.
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Preparing for Online Capacity Expansion