RAID sync with a new HD?

[MadJuggla9]

I am fairly new to raid, I HAD a raid1 mirrored setup on my pc when i started. ABout 2 weeks later one of the 100gig i bought off a guy at the forums the 2nd drive dies(i never did a chkdsk, but I'm pretty sure it was going bad - i bought 2 of 10).

I created an array in the RAID configuration and it made my HD IDE controller not show drives on POST, probably not supposed to, and then moved them both over and selected mirrored raid. i created the array and had it erase the disks as usual.

When i throw in a new 100gig HD how do I go about synching? Will it have a nice easy setup noticing one is different automatically or will the main one have to be master or what? Also, a replacement wouldnt be an EXACT same size ... how does the difference in size effect it? If it truncates the partition, I have had windows not wanna boot before when doing that, or does it basically do like norton ghost and not screw it up?

If i were to ghost them first, would the raid array be any easier in setting back up?

 

[MadJuggla9]

thanks for moving it mods*

bump*

 

[ilkhan]

Ive had to do this with my R1 array (pre-R5 array). With my controller at least (highpoint, IIRC), it asked if I wanted to copy a disc to the other and create the array or format. Only hard part was writing down which disc was which...

 

[MadJuggla9]

Ive had to do this with my R1 array (pre-R5 array). With my controller at least (highpoint, IIRC), it asked if I wanted to copy a disc to the other and create the array or format. Only hard part was writing down which disc was which...

If i get another HD I could definately tell the difference for copying which one to the other. What about size difference, larger and smaller; how does that work out?

 

[ilkhan]

if its raid one? putting in a smaller drive would...I dont know. Larger the space would be ignored, probably, or possibly available to use as a seperate drive, depending on controller. With a smaller drive it cant mirror the whole thing and it would depend a lot on what controller it is and how that wants to handle the problem. So no real answer

 

[The_Mage18]

You need a drive that is the same size or larger. Unless you have a high end RAID card that can dynamically arrange the array size, every other controller out there will not allow you to rebuilt the array if the second drive is smaller than the first.

Your best option if you can't get a drive to match the origional is get two that do match that are larger. Install one as a replacement to the failed drive, then let the array rebuild. Then remove the origonal and put the 2nd new drive, rinse repeat.

At that point you can use Partition Magic QTParted or any other partition resizer out there to reclaim the remaining space.

 

[MadJuggla9]

You need a drive that is the same size or larger. Unless you have a high end RAID card that can dynamically arrange the array size, every other controller out there will not allow you to rebuilt the array if the second drive is smaller than the first.

Your best option if you can't get a drive to match the origional is get two that do match that are larger. Install one as a replacement to the failed drive, then let the array rebuild. Then remove the origonal and put the 2nd new drive, rinse repeat.

At that point you can use Partition Magic QTParted or any other partition resizer out there to reclaim the remaining space.

Why not just ghost the good 100gig to a larger drive if i were to get larger drives and then only copy the raid once ... ghost doesnt screw up partition space on overhead.

 

[MadJuggla9]

Why not just ghost the good 100gig to a larger drive if i were to get larger drives and then only copy the raid once ... ghost doesnt screw up partition space on overhead.

Am I right here? Ive just never had a problem ghosting and worrying about partition size differences, I am new to RAID though.