unfortunately I can't change the server. I have tons of custom, closed-source software that won't run on newer hardware, that's why i have to use the current one. Yes, i'm planning a replacement, but is not something quick to do, i'll need many month redeveloping, in-house, the current closed-source software. Until that, I have to keep the data safe. technically I can use a new hardware, but I can't upgrade the operating system (a very old slackware, if I remember properly) or these closed-source software wont run anymore maybe the faster solution would be to add a cheap (which one?) HBA controller that supports more than 4 SATA disks, move all disks to this new controller and then convert, one by one, each 2way mirror to a 3way mirror: mirror01: sda, sdb will be converted to sda,sdb,sdf, then replace sda with sdg, then remove sdb downgrading to a 2way mirror but with all new disk. During the whole operation, redudancy is never lost and I'll do this on a live disc, with the original raid unmounted Il giorno lun 22 apr 2019 alle ore 16:24 Carsten Aulbert <carsten.aulbert@xxxxxxxxxx> ha scritto: > Frankly, I would opt either to get a new server - depending how old very > very very very old is - or boot a live disk and copy the *contents* of > everything over to one of the new disks attached to the system via USB > or any other means (spare on-board SATA) as my guess would be a single > disk should be able to hold everything you currently have. > > After this was done successfully, put all old disks out of the system as > a safe-guard if something goes terribly wrong. > > Then put in all new disks EXCEPT the one where your copy is on. Boot the > live system again, create your mirrors/raids (some may be incomplete at > the start) as you like and then start copying data back from the "copy > disk". > > Once done and verified[1] you should be able to re-partition the "copy > disk" and make all mirrors/raids complete again. > > Having all that said, for servers older than 8-10yrs it would probably > be better to get a new set of hardware and copy data between both systems. > > Cheers > > Carsten > > [1] if you OS is on these disks as well, you may want to check if you > can boot your system from the new disks! > -- > Dr. Carsten Aulbert, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, > Callinstraße 38, 30167 Hannover, Germany > Phone: +49 511 762 17185
