Raid 0 - is it convertable to Raid 1?

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J

John

I've converted a pair of hdds to a Raid 0 pair in error - I intended
to set up a mirror pair (Raid 1).

Does anyone know the most efficient way to convert to Raid 1?

I have room for only the two 160 Gb hdds in my Dell 8400. Making an
image of what is now a huge drive (300 Gb) on DVDs would be a vast
job.

I presume something as simple as system restore in xp won't do it and
I must be careful not to lose the lot.

At the moment the only possibility seems to involve reinstallation of
all software and data.

A simple but costly mistake.
 
You have to break the current RAID 0 array, reformat, and do a fresh
install. No way around it.
 
John said:
I've converted a pair of hdds to a Raid 0 pair in error - I intended
to set up a mirror pair (Raid 1).

Does anyone know the most efficient way to convert to Raid 1?

I have room for only the two 160 Gb hdds in my Dell 8400. Making an
image of what is now a huge drive (300 Gb) on DVDs would be a vast
job.

I presume something as simple as system restore in xp won't do it and
I must be careful not to lose the lot.

At the moment the only possibility seems to involve reinstallation of
all software and data.

A simple but costly mistake.
Click to expand...


you will need to back up all your data on the raid array...
because all will be lost when you convert it ...

the easiest way would be to simply buy another drive and back up to it...
a 300gig drive should not cost that much money and will be a heck of a lot
easier backing up to DVD's
 
John said:
I've converted a pair of hdds to a Raid 0 pair in error - I intended
to set up a mirror pair (Raid 1).

Does anyone know the most efficient way to convert to Raid 1?

I have room for only the two 160 Gb hdds in my Dell 8400. Making an
image of what is now a huge drive (300 Gb) on DVDs would be a vast
job.
Click to expand...

Well, if you want to run Raid 1, you really only want to back up 160gig of
data.

Simplest solution, pick up a cheap 160-200gig hard drive. Base it on cost
per gig and what the maximum you want to spend. For this task you won't need
a huge cache or quick seek times. Then pick up a cheap USB 2 enclosure
($20?).

Two ways you can go from here...

1) Just backup the data you wish to keep onto the new USB drive. Then kill
the RAID 0 and create a RAID 1, format and reinstall the OS and programs.

2) Use an drive image program to make an image backup of your current system
onto the USB drive. Then kill the RAID 0 and create a RAID 1, restore the
image to the new RAID 1 array and it should operate just as it did before.
Several HDD makers will even provide free imaging software if it's writing
the image to their brand of drive.
 
Thanks for all the advice.

I like Noozer's second option (I have Norton Ghost) except that I
would need over 300 Gigs in an external HDD to receive the image -
right?

Whichever, it was my worst mistake in about 30 years of computing.
Hey ho :(

--
J
 
John said:
Thanks for all the advice.

I like Noozer's second option (I have Norton Ghost) except that I
would need over 300 Gigs in an external HDD to receive the image -
right?
Click to expand...

Uhm.. If you are going to run the drives in RAID 1, you are only going to
have 160gig to put your stuff back onto.

How much space is used in your RAID 0 array?
 
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