----- Message from jonathan.gazeley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ---------
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:04:52 +0100
From: Jonathan Gazeley <jonathan.gazeley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: Jonathan Gazeley <jonathan.gazeley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Unsure of changes to array
To: linux-raid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dear all, This is hopefully a simple question for you to answer, but I am fairly new to RAID and don't want to risk losing my data! My setup is as follows: - I have four 500GB disks. Each disk is split into a 5GB partition, and a 495GB partition. - The four 5GB partitions are in a RAID-5 array, md0. CentOS is installed on this 15GB partition. - The four 495GB partiions are in a RAID-5 array, md1. This partition holds my user data. However, I have decided I no longer wish to two arrays across the disks. I've added a fifth disk on which I have installed the OS without RAID, meaning the old md0 is currently unused. Can I simply remove the four 5GB partitions, and resize the four 495GB partitions to fill the entire disk? Will this break anything? Before anybody tells me off for having the OS on a non-RAID disk, this is a home server and therefore high availability is not an issue. But keeping my data safe against disk failures is important to me. Cheers, Jonathan
----- End message from jonathan.gazeley@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ----- ***CAUTION***CAUTION***CAUTION*** Do backups if you can.. Are the RAID partitions on your disk the first partition or a different one?If its not the first partition you'll have _move_ your partition to the beginning of the disk. So assuming your first disk is /dev/sda, sda1 your OS partition which want to recycle, sda2 your RAID partition you could do:
dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/lots_of_space_here/sda.dumpthen repartition your sda, now sda1 is your RAID partition and it spans across the whole drive
dd if=/my_new_disk/sda.dump of=/dev/sda1After that you should be able to assemble your RAID again with /dev/sda1 instead of /dev/sda2. If that works, continue with the other disks. If it doesn't work your array should be degraded and you should still be able to add /dev/sda1 and then md should sync to it to become clean again. Note that during this whole operation you will be vulnerable to any disk failures. You may think about buying another disk and converting to raid6 for an additional layer of protection before attempting this. If you have friend who has a faint idea what you do have him join you to look over your shoulder and stop you from doing silly mistakes (e.g. mixing up "if" and "of" during dd). This is a very dangerous undertaking make one mistake and your data may be gone...
I hope this helps.. Alex. ======================================================================== # _ __ _ __ http://www.nagilum.org/ \n icq://69646724 # # / |/ /__ ____ _(_) /_ ____ _ nagilum@xxxxxxxxxxx \n +491776461165 # # / / _ `/ _ `/ / / // / ' \ Amiga (68k/PPC): AOS/NetBSD/Linux # # /_/|_/\_,_/\_, /_/_/\_,_/_/_/_/ Mac (PPC): MacOS-X / NetBSD /Linux # # /___/ x86: FreeBSD/Linux/Solaris/Win2k ARM9: EPOC EV6 # ======================================================================== ---------------------------------------------------------------- cakebox.homeunix.net - all the machine one needs..
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