Advice on RAID setup
 

:Pengy:
Can someone please offer advice on the best way to RAID (mirror) the following setup, with Linux configuration, not BIOS?

Current hardware (box for shared fileserver serving about 40 workstations):

hda - 80 Gb HD dual boot XP Pro/ Mandrake 10.1 core systems and LILO
hde - 200 Gb Maxtor HD - primary data storage
hdg - 200 Gb Maxtor HD - mirrored data storage

with following partitions:
hde1: 50 Gb (/home mount-point)
hde5: 30 Gb (read-only archive - no need to mirror)
hde6: 100 Gb (primary shared folder for entire office)

hdg1: 50 Gb
hdg5: 130 Gb

I would like to mirror "hde1" and "hde6" onto the hdg drive partitions, respectively.


What is the best way to setup RAID for this? (never setup RAID before, so please answer accordingly.....)

:newbie:

The following guide should be able to help you get it set up: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html

thanks, Matir

that's what i was looking for...

No problem. Let me know if you have any questions.

Is it possible to setup this mirroring with a source drive that has existing data?
If so, i assume i would have to manually copy the data to the target drive first so that the two are synchronized before the RAID takes effect.....

No. In fact, manually copying and then trying to sync would likely destroy the data.

What you need to do is follow the procedure for replacing a failed drive in a raid array. I believe that's covered in the Linux-Software-Raid-HOWTO