Im running on centos 5.1 and plesk. My server is unmanaged and contains 2 x 500GB hdd's one for storage the other is a software raid which im led to believe mirrors the first hdd and runs if the first drive fails.

My question is this how would i go about scrapping the raid i dont need the item to have a backup the data i have on there is not worth backing up.

I would much prefer to have 2 x 500GB hdds that i can use rather than 1 x 500gb and one as backup.

Total noobie when it comes to centos and any linux distrubution im ok with ssh and can manage most things but this is beyond me any help would be more than appreciated.

Remove the raid array and then format the two disks as seperate filesystems or put logical volume manager on and create a 1TB filesystem. (Of course if you do that, if either disk fails you will loose all data).

for example

mdadm --manage --stop /dev/md0
mdadm --misc --zero-superblock /dev/sdb1
mdadm --misc --zero-superblock /dev/sdbc1

then format the disk and create new filesystems or logical volumes, depending on your needs.

thanks for the reply as stated previsouly im a total noob when it comes to linux based systems. i have a site on the server at the moment which i dont have a problem removing and then putting back on after however im unsure how to format the disks at all.

when trying to update my plesk i also get a warning telling me that my root/psa folder does not contain enough space how would i resolve this issue by using your instructions above.

/dev/md1 972280 907360 15528 99% /
/dev/md5 4881408 2410072 2471336 50% /usr
/dev/md7 475521344 1150392 474370952 1% /var
/dev/md6 4881408 11312 4870096 1% /home
none 2013608 24196 1989412 2% /tmp


hope you can bear with me i will learn when i get given clear instructions.

many thanks

I've never actually needed to do this before, and like all this type of work there's always a risk of breaking the system. If you had console access and could put in a rescue cd it might be different. I can only suggest you try it on a file system that so not important, like /home.
Again I cannot guarantee that this will work and it may break your system completely. Also since your not using logical volume manager its going to be hard to expand the files systems anyway, which means breaking the mirrors and then moving data from one disk to another and then re-sizing partitions etc.
Don't think I'd be happy to talk you through it, I think it would not be an easy task to do, what about the hosting company you got the server from can they help?

Hi again thanks for the reply like you im also the same, therefore ive taken the decision to just leave the file system as it is. I managed to find a work around to the plesk update using an alternative folder for the updates so I dont get the space error.

I think ill just leave the raid there im sure i wont use 500GB anyhow.

The hosting provider 1and1 told me because its unmanaged there unable to do anything for me.

not to worry so far ive used 1GB a long way to go before i have to upgrade to either more storage or managed service.

I think that's a wise decision to be honest, It would certainly have been interesting to try, but fairly complex.