Hello,

can I install RAID-1 (mirror) on Fedora without affecting the system and all other files? If yes, how? There are 2 IDE hard drives both connected through Primary port (DEV0 and DEV1). I guess it would be more clever to have the drives on separate ports (primary and secondary), but I got this pc configured like this already.

Thanks!

No, it will wipe out the files and create an underlying system. Backup your data first then install from scratch, then restore the data. It's better if you setup the disks on different channels, they'll operate faster.

That's not correct. It's very easy to create raid 1 with an existing partition without having to build it from scratch.

http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_43_2812.shtm

If you are doing a system partition, boot from a live cd and do it there because I don't think you can have the partition mounted.

Spudgy, the link is not working for some reason. Are you sure if I do RAID-1 the data on source disk remains unaffected?

Another solution would be to use a utility such as ghost for linux to clone the entire disk to a second disk.

Yes. Here's the meat of the article:

Converting an existing 'live' filesytem on a single disk to a software RAID 1 mirror is not recommended and could potentially cause you to lose all your data. The best time to set up software RAID is either at installation time or before you intend using the filesystem.

However, if you have an existing filesystem and only now you realize that you want to convert it to RAID 1 (mirroring) then this document can help guide you in the right direction. It is extremely important that you backup all you critical data before trying any of this and if at all possible try this on a test machine before implementing in a live environment.

Essentially the command is straight forward to convert to RAID 1. Use a command similar to the one below. This assumes you have an identical second hard drive, /dev/hdc, that has been partitioned and formatted the same as the original drive, /dev/hda.

This command will mirror all the data on the partition/dev/hda3 to the partition/dev/hdc3 and create the RAID device /dev/md0. You can follow the progress of the RAID creation by looking at the file /proc/mdstat. To dynamically watch your RAID device being created use the following command: