Just wanted to get peoples opinions on the best way to make the following Raid changes in an environment.

Current:

4 x 74Gb 10k rpm SCSI Hard Drives in Raid 10 configuration
Total space = 140 odd GB

Future:

2 x 74Gb 10k rpm in Raid 1 (Mirroring)
3 x 146Gb 10k rpm in Raid 5 (striping with redundancy)

Is it just going to be the process of backing up all data (Ghost/LSR) to an external drive, blowing the raid away, setting it up with the Raid 1&5 and then retoring the image? Or is there a better way?

Cheers

I should have read it properly before replying.

Personally I'd look at rebuilding from scratch. If you can't do so though then Ghost would be the best bet.

Why not get a fourth disk for the second array and raid10 it? I love raid 10. My servers are all Raid 1 for system disk, raid 10 for data.

last edited by stinky at 17:15:08 22/Apr/07

yeh its lookn like im gonna have to do scratch. would have added 4th disk but server only supports 5 disks in hot swap otherwise i wouldda.

most versions of ghost cant handle raid arrays anyway, they go nuts sector copying from multiple disks. and restoring a sector copy to a different stripe set wont work anyway

Best solution ? different product, shadow protect or acronis products?

what kind of array controller?

some controllers can do migration from one raid level to another and resize LUNs created.

if your controller supports those functions, i would still suggest just rebuilding from scratch because they take sooo long to complete (days not hours).

i would also recommend starting to use a mirror pair for your OS LUN and raid5 or raid10 for data. makes this whole process so much easier in the future and allows you to break the OS mirror if you are applying dubious service packs or patches.

cheers ara, card is an adaptec 2120s. yeah raid 10 is not my cuppa tea, previous mob did it. now come time for more storage, its time to address the config.

cheers

what's wrong with leaving it raid10, just drive bay real estate?

na really wanna set it up with the separate raid set......

Current:

4 x 74Gb 10k rpm SCSI Hard Drives in Raid 10 configuration
Total space = 140 odd GB

Future:

2 x 74Gb 10k rpm in Raid 1 (Mirroring)
3 x 146Gb 10k rpm in Raid 5 (striping with redundancy)

Why dont you just (carefully) break the RAID10 and use those 2 disks to make your futue RAID1 and then make your RAID5 as normal. Copy your data from broken RAID10 to new RAID1 and then eBay the 2 additional disks for profit.

Why dont you just (carefully) break the RAID10 and use those 2 disks to make your futue RAID1 and then make your RAID5 as normal.

This would leave you with two drives in raid0 or a broken array. Why would he want to do that?

Most array controllers won't let you migrate raid types when the array is in a degraded state. So if you do manage to break the raid10 into a pair of drives in raid0 you still need to get them to raid1 somehow.

This would leave you with two drives in raid0 or a broken array. Why would he want to do that?

To achieve the future requirements of having 2 x 76Gb drives in a RAID1.

Most array controllers won't let you migrate raid types when the array is in a degraded state. So if you do manage to break the raid10 into a pair of drives in raid0 you still need to get them to raid1 somehow.

Break the RAID10 back into a RAID0 & RAID1. Destroy and rebuild the RAID1 to get rid of any previous RAID information and begin copying data (use Ghost, dd, etc). Of course, make sure you have < 74Gb of data on the drive before attempting.

I haven't done it but I can't see how it wouldn't work.

mmmmmmm, hot topic. I will *atempt* this saturday after running full backup on tapes AND shadow protect friday night.

I'll keep you posted.

na really wanna set it up with the separate raid set......

not sure what you mean