Moving disks from drive cages on separate channels to one storage enclosure

[James Howel]

I have 12 disks making up one logical raid 5 array mounted in two separate drive cages. Each of these cages are plugged into separate channels on a single Compaq smart array 5300.

I want to move these disks into a single 14 bay drive enclosure and plug that back into the same 5300 card as above.

Will this work?

[MG_GM]

You will need two disk cages available to do the transformation. Now You have two channels and drives are on SCSI IDs from 0 to 5 on both channels. What You need to do is the following:
1. Shutdown the server, attach single channel 14 drive enclosure to port2 on SA5300, physically move the drives that were on IDs 0-5 on seconfd channel to bays 6-12, so that they will have SCSI IDs 8-13. Then start the server, when SA5300 is initialized, it should report that drive position is changed and was automatically updated. Now, all drives in configuration have different SCSI IDs.
2. Move other six drives to the single channel enclosure into bays 0-5, connect enclosure to port 1 on SA5300 and start the server. After SA5300 initialization, controller should report drive position change and save new configuration. Your logical volume and data should be preserved.
It is important to do this in two steps otherwise controller will not be able to handle the changes. And it will only work if there are no additional drives configured on this controller (only one logical drive).
Of course always backup before action! If You are upgrading existent storage enclosure to single channel and You do not have another enclosure available for migration I am afraid, You will have to do backup and full restore of the volume.
Good luck!