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Lsi u320-2x, was the later Perc4s.... Bummer if it has changed. It still maybe possible, as you had to delete the volume (forgot to mention that), recreate the exact same drive selection, choose the new stripe size, but not initialize, then there would be a fast background initialization, you were good to go.
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"Once you create a VD the stripe size CAN NOT be changed, you will need to delete the VD and create a new one with the new stripe size (data will be destroyed). This is true for all RAID levels." Granted it does not work on parity raids, as previously mentioned, last time I did this was on a LSI u320-2x , live data, to save time during benchmarks of difference stripe sizes, has something changed ?
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If the single disk is now setup on the Perc adapter..... Single disk (=raid 0) to raid 5 Possible but not practical (I would not do it).... Have not used a single disk (raid 0) on a server in 12 years.. never tried it, but according to the LSI manual (page 2-59), it is possible . If you do try, make sure you backup, better still clone it to a IDE or SATA drive. You would still need to add one more drive to the resulting raid 5, and use a partition manger to expand the raid 5 to utilize the space
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"do not see an option in the BIOS setup on the controller or in open manager to format and test the drives." Your referring to low level format....old technology, past history. You could do this with non-servo drives, you can not do low level formating on new modern drives. The raid adapter will check all sectors when you initialize a raid, and will periodically test all sectors if "patrol reads" is not disabled. Most important Write cache should be set to "Write Back"
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There are benchmarks for (4) and (8) member r10s at the site, I was looking at the "storage" benchmarks. "As far as I can see Raid 10 with as much drives as possible is the better option." Roughly a 33% increase in speed with 4 disks added, dependent upon disk manufacturer's technology/drive speed. You can NOT add disks to a configured R10 array, your best option, if the present config is difficult to rebuild/restore data, is to clone the present array to an IDE/SATA drive
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Check out the benchmarks for 4 vs 8 drives R10, (5E is the neweat adapter tested), 8 will give a considerable speed increase, hope you have a hotspare on the unit. http://tweakers.net/benchdb/suite/13