From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Timothy D. Lenz" Subject: Removing drives Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:19:11 -0700 Message-ID: <4B8F26AF.7080308@vorgon.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids Some time back I started setting up a couple of vdr computers with raid. The one with 3 500gb drives, I setup 2 raid 1 partitions with 1 spare fo boot and swap and used the rest of the 3 drives for a raid5 array. I had problems getting it to boot, and it was advised to change the raid 1 arrays to 3 mirror which I did. Bu I got busy with other things and never tried to switch it to boot from the arrays. Since then I aquired a 4th drive same size and model. I want to change md0/1 back to 2 drive mirrors and change md2 from raid5 to raid1 freeing up a drive which I then want use to with the new drive to create another raid1 array. Before I can install the new drive, I need to get it booting from md0 so I can remove the old ide drive. I figure I need to shrink md0 and md1 and then fail the 3rd drive in each of those 2 arrays before changing them to 2 drive arrays? I find lots of stuff about adding drives, but not much about removing the drives or how to change them back to 2 drive arrays. Once md0 and md1 are back to 2 drives and it's booting, then I'll install and format the new drive and copy the contents of md2 over. Then I need to remake md2 as a 2 drive raid1. Then copy the data back and i'll have 2 drives to make md3.