[CentOS] Migrating to RAID

Thu Dec 10 17:23:05 UTC 2009
Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com>

At Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:39:25 -0600 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> I have CentOS 4.x installed on a single 500GB SATA drive.  Drive is
> about 10 percent used.  I would like to migrate to software RAID 5
> without reinstalling the OS.  Was thinking 3 500GB drives.  Is that
> possible or must I reinstall?

If you can install 4 drives, eg you have 4 bays and 4 SATA connections,
yes, it is easy.  Just install the three new drives (to SATA port 2, 3,
and 4), create the RAID-5 array (actually you'll need one small RAID-1
array for /boot, so you'll create two RAID sets: a small RAID-1 for
/boot and the rest for the RAID-5) and copy everything over.  You'll
need to re-install grub (using grub-install) and then shutdown the
machine and move the drive connectors around so that the new drives are
1, 2, and 3, and the old drive is 4 (or remove it completely), and
start the machine up.  You can then add the original drive as a hot
spare disk (or not).

> 
> Matt
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>                                                                                                           

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