Breaking Mirror

[Aaron McCavitt]

If I have a server that has been set up to do a Mirror at the hardware level,2 40B drives. Server running W2k, can I break the mirror and make them just 2 drives, like C and D. Basically, customer wants the drive space and not the mirroring.. whats the best way to do this?

[Chris Blumenshine]

What type of raid controller are you using?

[Helen French]

Hi,

First of all, backup your data before u start doing something. If u dont need ur data anymore and going for a fresh install, then u don't need to do this.

There will be mirror/disk utilities provided with the Controller, which supports ur hardware mirror. Make use of that for splitting the mirror. Once you split the mirror, you may have to create new file system by formatting the disk.

HTH,
Shiju

[Aaron McCavitt]

well, i dont think there is a disk with the controller. so if i have 2 disk mirrored, couldnt i just go into the RAID controller utilities and just blank out the second drive, therefore Id have one disk with all the os on it, and then have a drive D: more less?

[Dan Moesch]

Aaron,

Here it is step by step the long way:

Go into the RAID card utilities, break the mirror by "failing" one of the disks. Shut down the server, remove the disk you failed. Boot and go into the RAID utilities, and make a "new" config. Set the new disk as a RAID 0, but DON'T INITIALIZE the disk.

Save the config, and shutdown the server once again. Add the disk you removed, go into the RAID utilities and the other drive as its own RAID 0....

Its a pretty safe procedure, but I would run a full backup before you do this.