A Question about RAID

[Mtimerding]

I have a question about RAID setups .....

Currently I have 2 internal IDE drives and 2 internal
SATA drives .... the two SATA drives are in a JBOD
raid config ....they are connected via my motherboards
VIA Raid controller ....they appear in MY Computer as
simply Drive E (348 GB) .... in reality they are a 300
gb harddrive and a 73gb hard drive .... What I want to
do is replace the 73gb drive with another 300gb.

From what I understand, as soon a I remove the 73gb
drive, the raid will be considereded 'Broken', and ALL data
on the two discs will be lost, or least when I install the new
drive I will have to 're create' the array and then ALL existing
data will be lost. My question is, IS this true?
I do not have 350 gb of free space on the IDE drives to back
up the entire Raid for the change, but I could possibly
back up the 73gb drive but, I have no idea how to determine
what is just on the 73gb drive or how to back up just what
is on that drive.
Is there any way to find out what is on the 73gb and back
that up to another drive (my IDE) while I make the change and
thus change the drive, and have at a raid with at least what
was on the 300gb drive that I can then add the stuff backed up
from the 73gb?

Thank You

 

[Kerry Brown]

I have a question about RAID setups .....

Currently I have 2 internal IDE drives and 2 internal
SATA drives .... the two SATA drives are in a JBOD
raid config ....they are connected via my motherboards
VIA Raid controller ....they appear in MY Computer as
simply Drive E (348 GB) .... in reality they are a 300
gb harddrive and a 73gb hard drive .... What I want to
do is replace the 73gb drive with another 300gb.

From what I understand, as soon a I remove the 73gb
drive, the raid will be considereded 'Broken', and ALL data
on the two discs will be lost, or least when I install the new
drive I will have to 're create' the array and then ALL existing
data will be lost. My question is, IS this true?
I do not have 350 gb of free space on the IDE drives to back
up the entire Raid for the change, but I could possibly
back up the 73gb drive but, I have no idea how to determine
what is just on the 73gb drive or how to back up just what
is on that drive.
Is there any way to find out what is on the 73gb and back
that up to another drive (my IDE) while I make the change and
thus change the drive, and have at a raid with at least what
was on the 300gb drive that I can then add the stuff backed up
from the 73gb?

It sounds like you are using RAID 0 which is not fault tolerant so if one
drive goes you lose the whole array. I don't know of a way to change this.
How much data do you have on the array? If the data is less than 300 MB my
advice would be to install the new drive and clone the data to it with a
program like Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost. If it is just data you
could even just copy the data to it. Reboot the computer and go into the
RAID setup and remove the 73 GB drive. Shut down and reconnect the two 300
GB drives so that the new one is on the first SATA connection. Do not setup
RAID, reboot and you now have two 300 GB drives. You will have to
repartition and format the old 300 GB drive before you can use it with
Windows. Next time you will not have this problem.

Kerry

 

[DL]

Slight correction,
Raid 0 is stripping using multiple disks, there is no redundancy
Raid 1 is mirroring which has redundency (Mostly)
The above req. hd's of the same size - leastways they use the capacity size
of the smallest.
JBOD, just a bunch of disks has no redundency, though certain controllers
may be able to recover some data
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html

Unless you can backup the entire array you should be prepared to lose all
data!

If there are any apps installed in this array consider uninstalling, and
anything else you can do to reduce size.
Perhaps look into Zip or Rar for backup, or True Image or Ghost, all have
the ability to compress the backup.

PS mirror raid is NOT a replacement for a backup regime!

 

[Kerry Brown]

Slight correction,
Raid 0 is stripping using multiple disks, there is no redundancy
Raid 1 is mirroring which has redundency (Mostly)
The above req. hd's of the same size - leastways they use the capacity
size
of the smallest.
JBOD, just a bunch of disks has no redundency, though certain controllers
may be able to recover some data

Oops. You're right of course. I shouldn't answer posts before having my
morning coffee

Kerry

 

[Mtimerding]

Slight correction

"Kerry Brown" <[email protected]*a*m> wrote

Thanks all for the replies, tho it is not neccessarily what I wanted
to hear. But it won't be the end of the world if I lose it all (just a ton
of
work that was done making it) ..

The raid in question is just BACKUPs already .... it happens to be
my entire dvd collection which I have backed up on my computer.
So, if I lose the raid, then I will just have to rerip them all again.
I was just looking to see if it was possible to AVOID having to do
that.

(p.s. for what its worth, I am using a Raid (JBOD) config for this merely
for convienence sake, so I have just ONE volume (in my eyes) on here for
my (dvd) storage, and not have them scattered about on 4 or 5 diff
volumes/partitions)

Thanks again

 

[nb]

I have a question about RAID setups .....

Currently I have 2 internal IDE drives and 2 internal
SATA drives .... the two SATA drives are in a JBOD
raid config ....they are connected via my motherboards
VIA Raid controller ....they appear in MY Computer as
simply Drive E (348 GB) .... in reality they are a 300
gb harddrive and a 73gb hard drive .... What I want to
do is replace the 73gb drive with another 300gb.

From what I understand, as soon a I remove the 73gb
drive, the raid will be considereded 'Broken', and ALL data
on the two discs will be lost, or least when I install the new
drive I will have to 're create' the array and then ALL existing
data will be lost. My question is, IS this true?
I do not have 350 gb of free space on the IDE drives to back
up the entire Raid for the change, but I could possibly
back up the 73gb drive but, I have no idea how to determine
what is just on the 73gb drive or how to back up just what
is on that drive.
Is there any way to find out what is on the 73gb and back
that up to another drive (my IDE) while I make the change and
thus change the drive, and have at a raid with at least what
was on the 300gb drive that I can then add the stuff backed up
from the 73gb?

Thank You

You will have to start from scratch when you add the 300gb drive, no way to
know what data is where. But the solution is quite simple, just backup all
your data, yank the 73gb drive, add the 300 and load the data back. If you
don't have a method of backing up your data then why would you need all that
storage if you don't care if you loose it or not.

 

[Paul Knudsen]

From what I understand, as soon a I remove the 73gb
drive, the raid will be considereded 'Broken', and ALL data
on the two discs will be lost, or least when I install the new
drive I will have to 're create' the array and then ALL existing
data will be lost. My question is, IS this true?

Almost certainly. And when changing stuff, it's wise to take a backup
of ALL your data.

 

[dagdabrona]

Hello,

I can say you giving Active@ Undelete a try. It has great recover
methods and I bet it will be able to restore data you wish.
http://www.active-undelete.com/