RAID 0 to RAID 1

[Federico Amoranto]

I have a Proliant server that had a failed HD that was on slot 0. I pulled this out and moved the other HD that was on slot 1 to slot 0. The server was fine. Now that I have the rplcmt HD on slot 1, I would now like to change the redundancy from RAID 0 to RAID 1. I tried doing this through the migration option in the ACU. However, only RAID 0 is the choice that I am given. How can I change to RAID 1 w/o losing any data?

[Leonard Holling]

Hi Federico

What SMART Array controller and ROM version are you using?

Normally (if you use the SMART Array hardware RAID) you would have left the drive in SLOT 1 and then when you got a new drive removed the faulty one from Slot 0 and put in the new one. Then it would have automatically rebuilt to replace the failed drive.


Leonard...

[Federico Amoranto]

Thank you Leonard for your reply.

The ROM cofig for Arrays is version 2.16

Smart Array 5i (7.0.1.0 Win32)

Controller version 2.58

I am still hopeful that there is a way to move to RAID 1 w/o losing data.

Thank you,

Federico

[Leonard Holling]

Hi Federico

Hmmm I take it then that simply putting the drive back into slot 1 did not make the array rebuild then.

If there are no errors on POST showing that one of the disks of RAID set has failed then I can only give you the following solution would be to back up your data (using Ghost or another imaging program of your choice assuming it is Windows which I think it is based on your description). Deleting the existing array and then creating a new RAID 1 and then restoring the data.

For some reason it no longer thinks that it is part of the mirror set which means that there is not much chance of it rebuilding automatically for you.

Someone else might have a "trick" you can use but I do not know of any...

Leonard...

[Federico Amoranto]

Thank again Leonard for your quick response.

Rebuilding would be my last resort. I am hoping that there is, like you said, a trick out there. I'll wait till Tuesday if someone will reply with it.

Thanks again.

[Mark...]

Hi,

Not able to say for sure on this but I suspect that this is still correct. I have worked with smartarrays on Alpha systems [5300 series] and you can only go DOWN with raid levels and not up.

When you do this, say going down from Raid1 to raid0, then you would be freeing up the mirrored blocks [50% of what is there] for use as spare capacity in the array. You can then use this "spare" capacity to create a new drive.

Therefore, it would not be possible to migrate from Raid0 to Raid1 as all the blocks are allocated already. There is nothing to free up in the first place. Even if you think that "I've only used 25% of the capacity for real data" it dosn't matter as all the blocks are in use for your Raid0 drive.

There may be a "trick" or someone else may have a solution / know better but I suspect it would be as the other noter has said, backup, delete Raid0, recreate Raid1, restore data.

Mark...