Adding new HD to raid0 array

[lothar]

I want to expand my raid0 array. It's currently 250GB x 3, running software raid.
Is it possible to add a fourth disk to the same array without destroying the contents of the disks?
I've got a similar disk.

Anyone that has some experience with this?

[fangorn]

No Chance

All data is "striped" over all discs. That means the RAID 0 makes portions of a chosen size and writes portion one to disc 1, portion 2 to disc 2 and portion 3 to disc 3. To add a 4th disc, you would have to reportion all the data and collect the portions that would have gone to disc 4 and read them from discs 1, 2 and 3 and write them to disc 4. Even if this is mathematically possible, I would never jeopardice my productive data in this way!!!!

You will have to copy all the stuff to somewhere else and reinitiate a RAID 0 over 4 discs (you know that the chance of disc failure and complete data loss is really big in this setup, dont you?).

Do you record uncompressed video data from more than one camera or what do you need the combined data rate of four modern harddiscs for? With four or more discs IMHO in most cases a RAID 5 is much better than RAID 0, because of the Redundant data storage. If you need the performance badly, do a RAID 10 (a RAID 1 mirroring two RAID 0)

[lothar]

I took a look at this page http://unthought.net/raidreconf/index.shtml, but I wanted to know if someone had tried it...
My array is all filled up, and i need some more space
I don't want to add another partition, that will mess up my system.

[fangorn]

They are right to warn you.

As I said, it is mathematically not impossible to resize / redistribute your RAID 0! But if anything goes wrong you 700+ GB of data will be lost forever! Not a chance of getting them back!

If you want to risk it, it's your choice. I would never ever do that!