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Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 17:16:30 +0900
From: "Craig Hagerman" <craighagerman@gmail.com>
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Subject: [linux-lvm] Safeguarding LMV data?
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To: LVM general discussion and development <linux-lvm@redhat.com>

Hi,

I am using LVM to make two SATA discs (200GB and 250GB respectively)
into one big logical volume. As well I have an ATA (80GB) disc which
has 3 partitions (Debian /, and /usr, and another partition with
Ubuntu installed)

If I understand things correctly, if one of those drives fails I will
lose all the data spread across both drives. Is this correct? When I
set this up (over a year ago) I guess I kind of assumed that if one
drive failed I could shrink the LV and still have access to the data
on the good drive.

I think I have read that the best way to safeguard my data would be to
set up the hard drives as RAID 5 (which would require an additional
drive - minimum 3, right). I didn't consider this when I first set up
the LVM.

I am wondering if there is anything I can do now to mitigate the
chance of one drive failing and losing all data? I have thought about
buying another drive (say a 400GB), moving the data on there, setting
up LVM with RAID 5 and then moving the data back .... except that the
new drive would be intended to be used in that RAID 5 configuration. I
don't think I have a good enough understanding of either RAID 5 or LVM
and would really appreciate some advice for what I can do.

Craig Hagerman