How to Add Drives to a RAID 5
- 1). Power down your workstation or server. Disconnect the power cable, Ethernet cables and any other cables connected to the back of the computer.
- 2). Remove the case cover. Cases vary greatly with the methods that you need to accomplish this, so you may need to slide a side panel off, open a side panel window, unscrew the panel from the computer with the Phillips screwdriver or press a release button.
- 3). Slide the new drive into the hard disk drive bay on your computer case. Screw the drive brackets into the bay with the phillips head screwdriver. Connect the appropriate interface cable and power cable into the back of the drive. Most hard drives use either a SATA or IDE connection. The SATA cable is round and red, with a black connector on the end. The IDE cable is flat and wide, usually gray with a colored strip down one edge. If you are connecting an IDE cable, turn the cable so that the colored strip faces the power supply.
- 4). Close your computer case and reconnect all of the cables originally removed.
- 5). Enter your RAID adapter configuration software. For some RAID adapters, you access this during the boot-up sequence. Other RAID adapters use software launched from within the operating system. Depending on the RAID adapter, the new hard drive may be automatically added, or you might need to use a dynamic resizing setting to get the adapter to prepare the new hard drive.
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