Going from non-RAID to RAID 1

[twizttid1]

Hello,
I've got a Dell Poweredge 1600SC server with a PERC4/SC SCSI RAID card and I am currently running 3 physical drives on it. 2x 32GB on a RAID1 configuration and the 3rd 73GB as non-RAID.

My problem is the 73GB drive has been pushed offline a number of times by the RAID card and I'm convinced it'll eventually fail for good. So what I would like to do is get another 73GB drive and configure it with the failing drive via RAID 1 so the data gets mirrored. Once done I plan on removing the original faulty drive.

The goal is to swap the information between the drives while making the transition seem completely seamless to the users.

Can anyone help me out? let me know if my theory is A) Possible? or B) Needs Some Guidance. So do you guys think I can pull this off?

Thanks
J

 

[Prozak]

I assume this 73GB hard drive is not the boot drive and has no os files on it..
I think if you could get a complete image transfered to the drive (and the drive information does not change) before you switch on raid 1 it might work. I have to wonder why you don't just transfer the files to the new drive and then swap them, instead of waiting for it to fail.

 

[twizttid1]

Hmmm

You're correct that the 73GB doens't have any OS files on it whatsoever... but it does store a lot of our stuff ...

So you say I should put in the new drive, setup as non-Raid, and copy on image of my failing drive onto it. Then put them together in a RAID 1 array?

did I catch that right?

Or just copy an image onto the new drive and just simply swap them?

Thanks for any advice

 

[zephead]

what operating system are you running on said server? what are you using to manage the raid array?

 

[twizttid1]

I'm running Windows Small Business Server 2003 (std ed.)
What I'm using to control the raid is the Dell packaged software / firmware that I can access just after POST...

Any ideas??

THanks

 

[tdeg]

"Or just copy an image onto the new drive and just simply swap them?"

I would use this option. Some controllers can't non-destructively make a RAID-1 array.

You could use software mirroring also to make a RAID-1 set. It won't be as fast as hardware raid, but its non-destructive and it is built into Windows 2003.

Here is an article on it... don't know if I'd use it. http://www.techimo.com/articles/index.pl?photo=149

One thing with Windows though, NEVER make your boot disk dynamic. Its a bad idea for a few reasons.

 

[zephead]

you may be able to simply install the new disk and let the raid array write the data to it automatically... if you've already got the second disk i'd hook it up and see what happens/can be done.