# Example: Increasing the logical drive size

Create an array with three physical drives. Then, create two logical drives (labeled 1 and 2) in the array such that you have no available free space. The logical drive stripes look similar to the following.

Later, you decide you need additional space in the logical drives in the array. First, you must add more physical drives to the array.

Note: Blocks are labeled as x and * in these examples. All blocks labeled x are the same size in logical drive 1. All blocks labeled * are the same size in logical drive 2.

If you add two additional physical drives to the array, the logical drives migrate such that they are striped across all five drives. The ServeRAID Manager expands the size of each logical drive in proportion to the original configuration. If there originally was free space in the array, the free space is increased also.

When increasing logical drive space, you can add up to three physical drives, as long as the sum of the physical drives does not exceed the maximum physical drives allowed for the array. The maximum number of physical drives you can have in an array is limited by the controller stripe-unit size.

For the ServeRAID-8i controller and ServeRAID-7t controller, the ServeRAID Manager does not enforce the three physical drive limit when increasing logical drive size.

## More information

- Understanding stripe-unit size
- Understanding creating basic arrays
- Understanding creating logical drives
- Creating logical drives (action)
- Increasing logical drive size (action)
- Increasing logical drive size (SAS, SATA) (action)

Glossary | Contents

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