This is kinda two questions in one!

I have a server that is currently using 2x 120Gb hard disks running an MSI-6501 motherboard. It all works fine; however I would like to add software RAID-1 to the setup.

Currently one of the hard disks correctly contains the actual distro (Fedora Core 1, with updates as when they are available), and the other contains data (home directories, large postgresql database, apache www directories, all mounted in the relevant places). I only want raid on the data; not the software.

It was suggested somewhere that I use a 40gb hard disk; install Fedora onto that, and then use the two 120gb hard disks in RAID-1 to protect the data. So my question is;

1. How do I copy my currently operational system onto a new (and blank) 40Gb hard disk without losing my configuration or updates ? And then make that 40gb bootable ?

2. How do I then clone the data from one of the 120gb's onto the other and setup RAID-1 between ?

I've looked around (searched the forum, checked out the software raid how-to), but they don't seem to answer my questions.

Any advice or comments ?

Thanks Muchly
Deathsfriend

I'd like to know as well.
Is this even possible without some type of RAID controllers card?
And also, is there any slowdown?

1 - In order to copy the disk from one to anther you could try booting from CD in rescue mode, fdisk and create the new file system on the new disk, then mount them. Then simply copy the data from old to the new.
To make it bootable I beleive you have to re-install Grub or Lilo (never done it so can't help here), finally point your bios to boot the new disk, or simply change the around etc.

2 - I've built 2 systems now using RAID-1.

The first one uses hardware raid, I simply built the system as normal and the hardware mirrored the disk, my only problem was I have to use a kernel parameter to stop the kernel seeing the mirror disk.
The second one, uses Software RAID-1. To be honest there seams little performance differences between the two. but setup is alot different. Here you have to create a RAID device on both disks and then you create the file system into the RAID device, to make it easy I used the GUI during the original build.
I looked into adding an additional 2 disks and creating an additional RAID-1 setup but decided it was too much effort. For new disks Its not too much work, as you just fdisk the partitions (can't remember the partition type), edit the RAID configuration file, and create the file system (thats the basics anyway). Then plop your data into the file system. I don't think it was possible to create a RAID file system from an existing normal filesystem , (although I'm not too sure), seeing as you have to change the partition type and link the two sub disks together, I really dont know if it preserves the data.

As an after thought, you might want to consider mirroring the whole lot, since if your data's protected and you loose the root disk, you've still got a dead system.