migrate from raid 0 to raid 5

[Diane Beckham]

I have a HP NetServer LD Pro that is setup with 3 drives on a Raid 5. I am using NT 4.0 SP6a. One of my drives failed and I reconstructed my Raid 5 to Raid 0. I am reformatting the failed drive to see if I can get it back. Then I need to migrate it back to Raid 5. Can I do that without loosing all the data on the existing Raid 0? If yes, how?

TIA,

Diane

[Paul R. Dittrich]

When you change RAID levels, up or down, you are writing new metadata to the disks to let them know their role on the RAID team. This process destroys all existing data on the drives.
When your original RAID 5 configuration experienced a failed drive, you could have simply replaced the drive and let the rebuild process happen automagically, preserving all data. Changing RAID levels forces you to restore from backups. Sorry.....

[David Navarro]

Hi Diane, for change RAID level, you will loose all data in you original LUN ( or RAID disk). Before do that, you must backup all your data, then make raid level you want, and restore data.
Remember, in RAID 0 you haven't protection in case of failure of 1 disk.

[Enes Dizdarevic]

You did not specify RAID controller in your configuration. Depending on controller you may or may not be able to change RAID level. If you are using NetRaid which supports changing RAID level (quite likeliy since you have already changed raid level from raid 5 to raid 0) you can change raid level using netraid assistent. You have to select existing raid 0 logical drive and new physical drive and find "change raid level" or "capacity upgrade" item in menu. If you have not installed netraid assistent you can install it from netserver navigator.