Hi.
What is the safest way to switch out a disk in a software raid array
created with mdadm? I'm not talking about replacing a failed disk, I
want to take a healthy disk in the array and swap it for another
physical disk. Specifically, I have an array made up of 10 250gb
software-raid partitions on 8 300gb disks and 2 250gb disks, plus a
hot spare. I want to switch the 250s to new 300gb disks so everything
matches. Is there a way to do this without risking a rebuild? I can't
back everything up, so I want to be as risk-free as possible.
I guess what I want is to do something like this:
(1) Unmount the array
(2) Un-create the array
(3) Somehow exactly duplicate partition X to a partition Y on a new disk
(4) Re-create array with X gone and Y in it's place
(5) Check if the array is OK without changing/activating it
(6) If there is a problem, switch from Y back to X and have it as
though nothing changed
The part I'm worried about is (3), as I've tried duplicating
partition images before and it never works right. Is there a way to
do this with mdadm?
For what it's worth, mdadm / linux software raid handles this setup
beautifully... easy to set up, easy to maintain, easy to fix... I've
never had any trouble. And I didn't go broke buying raid controllers.
GREAT software!
Thanks a bunch!
-Will Sheffler
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