Software RAID Between OS Installs

[pjvander]

First off - great forums!

Hopefully someone can provide some theory, or better yet, experience with the following:
--
Windows SBS 2003 (all IDE - yeah, yeah...sucky, I know).

System Volume (C drive reporting bad blocks.
Data Volume is SOFTWARE RAID5 (Win2003 implementation), no known errors.

Question is two-fold:

1) If I remove RAID5 drives, reinstall OS/SBS to C:, and re-attach RAID5 channel, will all be peachy? Or, are there signatures written to the disks that new OS won't see (I don't care about ACLs).

2) If the above is true, does the same hold true if I were to use Windows 2003 Server as opposed to SBS for the Sys drive?

Obvioulsy, the goal is to preserve the data on software RAID configuration. Mission critical data is backed up on regular basis, but there is quite a bit of info I would like to retain without having to do backup/restore.

Many thanks to everyone out there who is even taking the time to read this. Please let me know if there are any options (free) or if you need any more info.

Feel free to shoot me .NET questions if anyone has them Karma at work!

 

[mrdenny]

With the software raid 5 the data "should" be ok after the OS reinstall. You should be ok to install Windows 2003 server on there then import the drive and all should go fine.

I would do a full backup just in case.

I would also recommending going and picking up an IDE RAID card. You can pick up a nice promise card that supports 6 drives for not much money. That will take away this problem, and take the parity load off the CPUs and put it on the RAID card where it should be.

To move the RAID 5 drives from a software RAID to a hardware RAID will require removing all the data from the drives and putting it back on after the array is rebuilt.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

(Not quite so old any more.)