[Box Backup] Moving a server to RAID

[Martin Ebourne]

dave bamford <dave@logical-progress.com> wrote:
> Or I can try and go the software RAID route and reinstall Fedora with RAID
> support, then move the existing backup data and keys to the new drives.
> 1. Is it possible to move this data and just pick up where one left off?

Ben's answered that.

> 2. Would you recommend the mobo RAID or the FC3 sw RAID?

Linux software RAID is definitely the way to go here. It will be more 
reliable (better tested), easier to use, more flexible, and probably 
just as fast as the so called hardware raid (which is actually software 
raid in the bios). See here for more info on the latter:
http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html
http://linux.yyz.us/sata/faq-sata-raid.html

> 3. How can I copy the data as I only have 2 SATA connectors on the mobo?
> I thought maybe of copying the data first to an IDE drive then back 
> to the new
> SATA drives. Perhaps there is a better way?

One great thing with linux software RAID which is different from any 
hardware RAID is that you RAID at the partition level, not the device 
level. Hence you can RAID only parts of disks. Also it's really easy to 
add in the mirror disk after you've already set the first one up (as 
long as you set the partitions right on the first one). That gives you 
lots of possibilities for copying the data onto one of the disks & then 
swapping the second one in later.

You may be already, but seriously consider using LVM on top of the s/w 
raid (actually I think LVM will do its own RAID 1 if you like) - the 
flexibility it gives you in managing partitions will be invaluable.

Cheers,

Martin.