Migrating from a 2 disk raid 0 array to a 4 disk raid 0+1

[Ayman Altounji]

All

Some background on my situation.

I have a Compaq DL380 and two disks in England, I have being shipped from
the US 2 more identical disks. (10k, 18.2GB). I will be installing Windows
2000 Adv server and configuring an application I need to put live in 2
weeks, the discs from the US won't be here until 2/3 days before we go live.
(Typical!) Therefore I need to get started configuring and building my
application as soon as possible and simply drop in the extra 2 discs when
they arrive.

The disk configuration I want is RAID 0+1, in the following format.

Array 1 (RAID 0)
18.2GB ID 0
18.2GB ID 1

Array 2 (RAID 0)
18.2GB ID 3
18.2GB ID 4

Both Array 1 and 2 then will need to be in a RAID 1 (mirror) configuration.

The question I have is...

I borrowed two discs today from another group and configured one array with
just the system utils partition (the F10 bootup option) with two discs in a
RAID 0 array. I then added the two extra discs (identical in model) and then
tried to create a second array which I would then add into a new array that
was a mirror of both the striped sets. However I couldn't do this (after
many a menu hunting, foul mouthing attempts)

Then I searched the net, found only one conversation relavent, and it
mentioned you needed to do a complete system erase before being able to
configure a 0+1 RAID array. Is this correct ? Surely I must be able to
migrate the RAID array from one 0 array to a 0+1 ? Anyone able to advise ?

Simon Thorpe
Operations Manager
SealedMedia