RAID-1 - Converting from SAS 5/iR to Perc 5i Controller. How easy?

[lanrat]

Hi,

Config: Dell PE840 with hotswap chassis and 2x 160Gb SATA "hot-swap" HDD's controlled by a SAS 5/iR Adapter. OS is SBS 2k3 (R2).

Question: If I swap out the SAS 5/iR for a Perc 5i I am presuming that not only will the entire array need to be re-built but the drives would first be re-formatted thus losing my OS install and data - can anyone tell me if there is a way to transfer the data without losing the setup. eg make an image of the array that can be restored?

Why do I want to do this? ...

I selected the "cheap" option for this server 'cause according to Dell the SAS 5/iR supports "hot-swap" drives - yeah right!

I went to swap out a drive and discovered that the SAS 5/iR does *not* support true hot-swap (there is *no* ability to gracefully take a drive "offline"/power-off with this controller before removing a drive) - great hey!! :^(

Some ideas please....

 

[johnv20]

why don't you just ghost the os & data to a separate location

you can then rebuild & restore from the original image

 

[lanrat]

Thanks johnv20 for the reply.

I have thought of - and would like to use that option - I am not sure though how "ghosting" an image of the OS from an array (RAID1) is restored with a "hardware" RAID controller in the mix. I've only ever used ghost with standard controllers. Have you done this successfully and do you have a procedure I can try??

 

[PaulGillespie]

We did it a while back with a cheap IDE controller. If budget allows, get a new hard drive and keep one of the working disks as a backup just in case.

Install the Perc raid card in the server leaving the sata raid in place. Boot the server into the OS. You will now have to add the drivers for the new raid card. Reboot if necessary.

Shut down the server. Boot from a ghost floppy or whatever your preferred method is. You might have to give ghost the raid card driver to pick up the sata card, then just ghost the volume to another disk.

Shutdown the server and remove the sata card. Attach the sata drives to the Perc card and configure the RAID. Now restore the Image using ghost. When it boots, because you have added the driver to the OS previously it should update the controler driver.

If it all goes wrong, you should have the spare drive to boot off of the sata card again.

Not sure if this will work for you but it might.

Good luck.

 

[LawnBoy]

I ghost RAID 1 arrays frequently. Forget about the RAID, it will restore just like a single IDE drive would.

Unless you're using software RAID, which the PERCs are not.

 

[technome]

The perc 5IR only does simple raid 1, disk migration from the 5IR to the higher end Perc adapters is not possible. Either cloning or rebuilding are your only options.

Ghost should do it, but I strickly have been using Acronis Server for raid cloning.

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