I created /dev/md1 mounted at root ('/') when installing Suse 10.0. It contains:
/dev/hda2
/dev/hdb2
/dev/hdd2

I didn't realize this setups actually creates 2 mirrors of the main partition (hda2). What I intened to do was setup a RAID1 with 1 mirror and 1 spare. Can I change the RAID to 2 drives with 1 spare?

Thanks,

Andy

What's the difference between having two mirrors and a spare.. Other than a bit of overhead to write to three discks instead of two..

Personally with three drives I would just have gone with RAID 5, instead of RAID 1..
although I can see with your configuration you could loose 2 drives and not loose any data..

Exactly! I don't want the overhead of writing two mirrors. Also, I want the "active" mirror to be on a separate controller.


I have a RAID 5 using the bulk of the drive space on the 3 drives. I used a small partition on each for the RAID1. Anyways, I've heard it's not possible to boot a RAID5 from GRUB. However, even if it were possible I'd rather run a RAID1 for the OS files.

I still haven't figured out how to remove one of the drives from the RAID1 and then add it as a spare. I've tried removing it and re-adding it but it always becomes a mirror again instead of a spare. Anyone know how to reconfigure this? It should be super simple but I can't find anything through Google on how to do this.