Idea using RAID 1 for backup

[Eduardo Jiménez Nieto]

Hello. First of all, sorry for my poor english.

We are planning to install a P410 on one of our HP servers to have some disks on RAID 1 configuration.

We want to know if we can make a RAID 1 (Disks A and B), take one of the disks (Disk B)and use it as backup, then attach other disk to the RAID 1 (Disk C). Then, after a week, remove Disk C, put it away, and plug Disk B again into the RAID 1.

Can we do all of this while server is running?

Thanks.

[Uwe Zessin]

It is called split-mirror, but you need to break the mirroring while the operating system is offline.

Do NOT just pull a disk drive! You risk ending up with inconsistant data or a corrupted file system, because the SmartArray controllers usually work with write-back caching and that negates any careful-write-ordering from databases or filesystems.