Migrating to RAID 0

Bono · n00b Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 24

Hello,

I have currently two disks, one of them is unused and I'd like to use it for RAID with the first one, on which I have a running Gentoo (four partitions : windows (unused

), / , /home and swap)

What I'd like is to mirror my home (for more security), so with RAID-0 and maybe in a second time put my / on RAID 1 for more speed.

My question is, about the first part : can I set up a RAID 0 without destroying my /home ? :-)

Thanks in advance for all your answers !

truc · Advocate Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 3199

Sadako · Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 7:53 pm Post subject:

I presume you're talking about a software raid, with either mdadm or raidtools.

I did something similar a little while back, what you can do is set up a raid-1 array with two devices,
but only specify one (the partition on the unused disk), setting the other one as "missing".

Then you can create the filesystem on the raid device (/dev/md0 most likely) and copy everything
from your /home to the new filesystem (or alternatively you could just use dd to copy the existing filesystem).

After that, change your fstab to use the raid device as /home, reboot, and if everything is working okay
you can add the old /home partition to the array to complete it.

If you know what you're doing, it's as simple as it sounds, but I think you really need to read up on this a lot more first.

Also, this method wont work with a raid-0 (stripped) array, if you are going to changed your / at a later date.
_________________
"You have to invite me in"

Bono · n00b Joined: 18 Feb 2005 Posts: 24

Thanks, I'll read and then try