Migrating from non-RAID to RAID-1

Migrating from non-RAID to RAID-1

[Shaun Jackman]

I have a single non-RAID SATA drive with Debian (Sarge) installed and
data on it. I also have a duplicate blank drive. I would like to
migrate from my non-RAID system to a RAID-1 (mirrored) system for
redundancy, with each disk being an exact duplicate of the other. Is
it possible to do this without having to wipe the first drive clean?
I'd appreciate a pointer to a HOWTO or recipe if it answers this
specific question.

Any recommendations for a friendly RAID and LVM management tool?

Please cc me in your reply. Thanks,
Shaun

Re: Migrating from non-RAID to RAID-1

[Shaun Jackman]

2005/8/9, Mike Hardy <mhardy@h3c.com>:
> This was asked not but a few days ago. While not intending to be rude, I
> believe searching the archives will turn up step by step guidance
> 
> -Mike

Thanks for the pointer, Mike. I was using Google's mailing list
archive, but it seems woefully incomplete.
http://groups.google.ca/group/mlist.linux.raid

Another linux-raid archive had the message you mentioned:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-raid&m=112318177226599

The directions were...
sfdisk -d /dev/sda > /tmp/sda.part
sfdisk /dev/sdb < /tmp/sda.part
read the Software RAID-HowTo, and look for the Root-RAID section

Cheers,
Shaun

Re: Migrating from non-RAID to RAID-1

[Christopher Smith]

Shaun Jackman wrote:
> I have a single non-RAID SATA drive with Debian (Sarge) installed and
> data on it. I also have a duplicate blank drive. I would like to
> migrate from my non-RAID system to a RAID-1 (mirrored) system for
> redundancy, with each disk being an exact duplicate of the other. Is
> it possible to do this without having to wipe the first drive clean?
> I'd appreciate a pointer to a HOWTO or recipe if it answers this
> specific question.

This should get you started:

http://xtronics.com/reference/SATA-RAID-debian-for-2.6.html

Re: Migrating from non-RAID to RAID-1

[Shaun Jackman]

2005/8/9, Christopher Smith <csmith@nighthawkrad.net>:
> Shaun Jackman wrote:
> > I have a single non-RAID SATA drive with Debian (Sarge) installed and
> > data on it. I also have a duplicate blank drive. I would like to
> > migrate from my non-RAID system to a RAID-1 (mirrored) system for
> > redundancy, with each disk being an exact duplicate of the other. Is
> > it possible to do this without having to wipe the first drive clean?
> > I'd appreciate a pointer to a HOWTO or recipe if it answers this
> > specific question.
> 
> This should get you started:
> 
> http://xtronics.com/reference/SATA-RAID-debian-for-2.6.html

Amazing! Thanks for the tip, Christopher. The document [1] you
mentioned is an absolute must-read for anyone migrating from a
non-RAID to RAID-1 storage system. The document's title suggests it's
Debian specific, but the vast majority of it is distribution agnostic.
It's up to date, using the modern mdadm tool; many documents I read
still referred to raidtools. The migration process went quite
flawlessly!

Thanks to all those that helped. Cheers,
Shaun

[1] Installing Debian with SATA based RAID
http://xtronics.com/reference/SATA-RAID-debian-for-2.6.html