RAID Question

[ilusv]

I have 4 drives stripped and mirrored (0, 1) unfortunately I was forced to disconnect the mirrored drives in order to gain 1 gig of space (sounds ridiculous but that 1 gig was needed so I can access a utility called Adobe Version Cue) my designers some how managed to go thru 30 gigs of space in 6 days and the drives were maxed out. So the utility won’t even run (Freeing up that 1 Gig allowed me to run it)

Once I ran it I was able to free up 48 gigs of space that I desperately needed.


I worked off of my stripped drives (channel 1) for 2 weeks and the time has come to connect the mirrored drives. My concern is which set of stripped drives will over write the other?

I discounted (Channel 2) off of the Promise RAID controller Card.

 

[rvnguy]

ilusv,

I am assuming that all data now exists on the striped drives.

I suggest "Zeroing" out the other drives and using the promise utility to rebuild your array.

It is always "IMPORTANT" to know which drives are attached and to where, when performing this function. You could end up mirroring the blank drive. The Utility will ask which drive(s) are the source and which drive(s) are the target. Select carefully.


rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[ilusv]

Correct. The up to date data currently exists on the stripped drives of off channel 1. What if I just plug channel 2 back in? Would (channel 1) stripe overwrite (channel 2) stripe?

I didn't break the RAID using the card’s BIOS. I just unpluged Channel 2 manually by unplugging the cable

 

[dbData]

If data was stripped across both channels, you would not have been able to access any data after you removed drives from channel 2. Your setup must be stripping the drives on channel 1 then mirroring channel 1 to channel 2.

Before you do anything else, backup the data. Then try plugging in the channel 2 drives and see what happens. It's likely nothing will happen and you have to recreate the mirroring.

I agree with rvnguy. It'll be best if you zero-out the channel 2 drives first.

Once you have your setup working, document the setup procedure you use step by step. Keep a copy of the document inside the computer for future reference.

Good Luck!


Rick

http://www.data-recovery-hub.com

 

[ilusv]

I followed your instructions guys and it worked, thank you very much

 

[rvnguy]

ilusv,

Thank You for posting back that you were successful...

It is always good to hear that a problem gets solved.


rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all