Need to copy non RAID drive to RAID-1 setup.

[coorsman]

The server we purchased is W2003 - 5 drive bays and RAID1.

Unfortuantly when orignally installed it wasn't set up as a RAID machine, it only had one drive. It failed, and I installed a new 500GB drive, didn't set it up as raid, and reinstalled software.

Now I want to install 2 more 500GB and set them up as RAID-1, (i think 1 is my only option as it's an older machine).

After installing the 2 new RAID drives, how do I image the old system drive to the RAID drives?


Cheers,
Coorsman

 

[rclarke250]

It can't be that old if it can take 500GB drives, Check to see if it will support raid 5, as I fail to see any benefit you would get from going to a raid 1 3 drive system.

If it doesn't support raid 5, it should support hot spares, so in this case I would set it up as a raid 1 only using 2 drives, and set the third drive as a hot spare. Now depending on the raid card,level of firmware,and software used, you may be able to create the new raid array as a 1 and keep the data, after all it is just a mirror, and some higher end raid cards support this feature.

There is also the option of software raid, and windows server 2k3 supports raid 0,1,5. Also as a note If your raid card supports raid level 1, it would also support raid level 0.

 

[coorsman]

The machine is 3 hours away and I have to do this on a Sunday when they are closed, lucky me.

I'm not sure of the raid5, the server is a Nobilis i201-TR and was purchased in 2006.

So is there a way to
1. create the raid 1 or 5 2 drive array.
2. restore from the orignal system drive using a backup program Ghost etc,to the raid drives?


Cheers,
Coorsman

 

[DrB0b]

Raid 5 has to have a minimum of 3 drives.

"Silence is golden, duct tape is silver...

 

[coorsman]

Thanks, that should be no problem at $75 dollars each.


Cheers,
Coorsman

 

[rclarke250]

should be no issue to do a partition to partition copy, if the drive running now has the driver for the raid card installed.

 

[coorsman]

I purchased 3 more 500GB drives $59 each, wow I remember when 10MB was $500 on a IBM-PC lol.

No, the drive does not have any raid or drivers, I was looking at another post about using paragon migration software, looks like this might work for me.

Cheers,
Coorsman