[Solved]Expanding raid 5 array

[sulapse]

Hello,

 

I have a server that I'm working on, however, sadly I don't have too much experience with raid in general.

So this server has 3x 256Gb SSD's setup in a hardware raid 5 array, and partition C:/ has 5gb remaining and partition :D/ has about 200gb remaining.

So expanding the partitions is not an option here.

 

I am going to upgrade the raid array with 3x 512Gb SSD's and remove the old 256 ones.

Note: OS is installed on this raid array.

 

The way I thought of going about this is installing the 512gb drives and configure raid on them, and FULLY cloning every single byte from the 256gb array over to the new one, and then just shut the server down, take out the 256gb drives and pray to the IT gods that the server boots.

 

The second option I was thinking of was taking one disk out, replacing with a 512gb drive, rebuild and re-do this until all 3 disks have been replaced, and just expand the partitions in disk manager.

 

Third option would be a complete full backup of the system, replace disks, configure raid and recover from the backup. However the server is running Windows Server 2008 and I don't have access to a disk or usb for this.

 

Suggestions are much appreciated.

Thank you.

[Acedia]

Depending on your raid controller you can increase and decrease the volume without taking it down. IIRC at least HP SmartArray controllers can do that.

[Electronics Wizardy]

What raid card?

 

You can often just replace the drives with bigger ones, then expand, no cloning needed.

 

But really, upgrade from server 2008, its almost end of life. Probably time to run this all off a hypervisor, and run server 2019

[sulapse]

Thanks for the replies guys.

 

Sadly, I didn't look up which raid card the server has before leaving the site, but I'll be back there on friday to replace the drives.

If the raid card isn't compatible with just replacing the drives with bigger ones, would the cloning method then be a viable method to use?

 

The customer using this server works in accounting, and they use a lot of older software that is a pure pain in the ass to get running on newer OS'.

I'll recommend them to upgrade, but I'll doubt they want to unless it's REALLY necessary.

[sulapse]

On 4/30/2019 at 9:24 PM, Acedia said:

Depending on your raid controller you can increase and decrease the volume without taking it down. IIRC at least HP SmartArray controllers can do that.

 

On 4/30/2019 at 10:08 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

What raid card?

 

You can often just replace the drives with bigger ones, then expand, no cloning needed.

 

But really, upgrade from server 2008, its almost end of life. Probably time to run this all off a hypervisor, and run server 2019

 

A little update;

I did go with the replace disk, rebuild, replace disk method.

Worked fine until I tried to expand the partitions, now I'm just getting a 0x0000007e error when I'm trying to boot into Windows.

Luckily I have an Acronis backup from today, however I tried just setting up the raid from scratch and recovring the backup, but that didn't work. Same error.

Can't access Safe mode with command prompt and I cannot access safe mode in general as the local admin account is not setup (Server is on a domain).

 

It's currently 2:20am, been here since 5pm. Please someone for the love of god, help me.

 

EDIT:

Using last known good configuration atleast let me into the OS, but some services won't start properly and all shared network folders are gone......

Also a bunch of errors in event viewer.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, sulapse said:

 

 

A little update;

I did go with the replace disk, rebuild, replace disk method.

Worked fine until I tried to expand the partitions, now I'm just getting a 0x0000007e error when I'm trying to boot into Windows.

Luckily I have an Acronis backup from today, however I tried just setting up the raid from scratch and recovring the backup, but that didn't work. Same error.

Can't access Safe mode with command prompt and I cannot access safe mode in general as the local admin account is not setup (Server is on a domain).

 

It's currently 2:20am, been here since 5pm. Please someone for the love of god, help me.

Thats not good. What does chkdsk show? How about sfc scan now?

 

So the backup is completely shot? What if you make the raid from the old drives?

 

Can you just reinstall? Get vms if you can here.

[sulapse]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Thats not good. What does chkdsk show? How about sfc scan now?

 

So the backup is completely shot? What if you make the raid from the old drives?

 

Can you just reinstall? Get vms if you can here.

Hey, thanks for you reply. Currently 3:55am.

 

Please see my edit in that post.

Now I'm stuck here with some services that won't run, and my mapped network drives are gone.

The most important thing to get up and running this morning would be the mapped drives, and then I can go home and finally get some rest.

 

Getting 6 errors from AD:

Multiple - Event ID 1168 @02:53 and earlier than that.

An Event ID 2840 at 02:53

Although I did get a ID 1000 "Microsoft ADDS startup complete" and ID 1394 "All problems preventing updates to the ADDS database have been cleared. New updates to the ADDS database are succeeding. The Net Logon service has restarted" - Which is good enough and will atleast let domain users login, won't help much though if they cant access the mapped drives.

Getting "The application's service failed to start in a timely manner" from Xerox Device Agent.. (Not important at all, but this will most likely not be the only program with this issue)

 

I'm assuming the mapped drives were stored in the registry, so I could just do some fancy copy&paste to get them working again?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

9 minutes ago, sulapse said:

Hey, thanks for you reply. Currently 3:55am.

 

Please see my edit in that post.

Now I'm stuck here with some services that won't run, and my mapped network drives are gone.

The most important thing to get up and running this morning would be the mapped drives, and then I can go home and finally get some rest.

 

Getting 6 errors from AD:

Multiple - Event ID 1168 @02:53 and earlier than that.

An Event ID 2840 at 02:53

Although I did get a ID 1000 "Microsoft ADDS startup complete" and ID 1394 "All problems preventing updates to the ADDS database have been cleared. New updates to the ADDS database are succeeding. The Net Logon service has restarted" - Which is good enough and will atleast let domain users login, won't help much though if they cant access the mapped drives.

Getting "The application's service failed to start in a timely manner" from Xerox Device Agent.. (Not important at all, but this will most likely not be the only program with this issue)

 

I'm assuming the mapped drives were stored in the registry, so I could just do some fancy copy&paste to get them working again?

 

is this a domain controller?

 

did you check the disk? sfc /scannow result?

 

 

[sulapse]

23 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

is this a domain controller?

 

did you check the disk? sfc /scannow result?

 

 

This is indeed a domain controller.

The shared network drives are working fine now.

 

But as I restarted one of the PC's here I saw a message about being logged in to a temporary profile...

sfc scannow says:

"Windows resource protection did not find ant integrity violations."

I'm starting to think this is all just a permissions issue now..

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, sulapse said:

This is indeed a domain controller.

The shared network drives are working fine now.

 

But as I restarted one of the PC's here I saw a message about being logged in to a temporary profile...

sfc scannow says:

"Windows resource protection did not find ant integrity violations."

I'm starting to think this is all just a permissions issue now..

are you doing romaing profiles?

 

You should really make some vms, you don't want this all running on a dc.

[sulapse]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

are you doing romaing profiles?

 

You should really make some vms, you don't want this all running on a dc.

I don't even know what a roaming profile is, I just logged in on the PC and it said it wasn't fully synchronized.

I would make VM's, sadly I didn't set this server up from scratch.

 

 

I am so dead right now, 5:12am, 1 hour drive to get back home.

I'm gonna leave it as it is right now, and continue tomorrow / sunday, way too tired to even think straight.

 

Atleast the shared folders work, that was #1 priority, since they work directly in them.

I'm honestly just thinking about making a fresh Windows Server install and just recovering folders and files, instead of the whole disk/volumes.

Feedback is appreciated. Also I'll remember to never use Acronis for this kind of stuff, from my reading a full windows image would be way better in this case.

 

Goodnight for now, and thanks so much for the help so far.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, sulapse said:

I don't even know what a roaming profile is, I just logged in on the PC and it said it wasn't fully synchronized.

I would make VM's, sadly I didn't set this server up from scratch.

 

 

I am so dead right now, 5:12am, 1 hour drive to get back home.

I'm gonna leave it as it is right now, and continue tomorrow / sunday, way too tired to even think straight.

 

Atleast the shared folders work, that was #1 priority, since they work directly in them.

I'm honestly just thinking about making a fresh Windows Server install and just recovering folders and files, instead of the whole disk/volumes.

Feedback is appreciated. Also I'll remember to never use Acronis for this kind of stuff, from my reading a full windows image would be way better in this case.

 

Goodnight for now, and thanks so much for the help so far.

Do you know what the group policy on the system is doing?

 

Its probably about time to redo this if you can.

[sulapse]

3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you know what the group policy on the system is doing?

 

Its probably about time to redo this if you can.

I'm back, I can't sleep, just thinking about how I'm gonna fix this thing..

 

But now that you mention it, I don't actually think it's used for anything other than the domain logins.

They have all programs and files on the server, and the folders containing these are just shared to the correct user.

The only thing one of them has locally is VMWare.

 

So, I could technically just clone most of the folder structure from the drive(s), reinstall Windows and set it all up in 10 minutes(?)

[Electronics Wizardy]

9 hours ago, sulapse said:

I'm back, I can't sleep, just thinking about how I'm gonna fix this thing..

 

But now that you mention it, I don't actually think it's used for anything other than the domain logins.

They have all programs and files on the server, and the folders containing these are just shared to the correct user.

The only thing one of them has locally is VMWare.

 

So, I could technically just clone most of the folder structure from the drive(s), reinstall Windows and set it all up in 10 minutes(?)

files and programs? So your running vdi on the server?

 

Something just doesn't makse sense here.

[dalekphalm]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

files and programs? So your running vdi on the server?

 

Something just doesn't makse sense here.

Kinda sounds like they literally installed the programs to a file share. Given the experience level the OP has shown (no offense my friend), I doubt he knows what VDI is.

 

I could be mistaken though.

[sulapse]

46 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Kinda sounds like they literally installed the programs to a file share. Given the experience level the OP has shown (no offense my friend), I doubt he knows what VDI is.

 

I could be mistaken though.

None taken

 

The only Windows Server / AD experience I have is what I got from school, which is basically just simple user & group rules.

And you are correct, they literally installed the programs inside a shared folder.

 

So, setting this server up from scratch would be really easy, only "difficulty" would be making sure I don't miss ANY file, these are pretty important files.

 

 

EDIT: If anyone reading this thread has any experience with Acronis, please let me know if it would be possible for me to reinstall Windows Server 2008 and then just recover specific folders & settings.

[sulapse]

Hello again to anyone reading this.

 

A little update; 

After reinstalling any program that wasn't working, most of the system seems to be working just as normal.

Windows is detecting C drive with 100gb total space, D with 372gb and the new 476gb unallocated space.

So only thing left to do is to safely expand the C & D drive.

 

Windows disk management won't allow this, so thinking about using EaseUS, or another software.

Any recommendations?

 

Also, sorry for continuous bumping of this thread.

I just need to write down what I've been experiencing and how I've fixed it so I can come back here incase I run in to the same issue(s) again - And forget what I did to fix it as Google hasn't been very useful on the 0x0000007e BSOD.

 

Thanks to the people that has helped me with this nightmare.

Peace  

 

EDIT: Note to self: Should've replaced each drive at once and rebuilt, and then used GParted straight away.