Suggestions on How to Move to Software RIAD
 

Hello.

I've got Mandrake 9.0 installed on a machine with a SCSI controler and 2 - 20Gig SCSI HDs. I wasn't quite familiar with how Mandrake 9.0's installer had changed, so when I attempted to create a Linux RAID at install time, it gave me an 243MB RAID dirve (not hardware RAID). I didn't like that, so I stepped back and re-did the partitioning to just be a regular 10 Gig partition.

Hind-sight tells me that it was my fault (I didn't slide the drive space slider from it's default size before creating the Linux RAID). :(

However, I would still like to create an Linux RAID, but I would like to (if possible) create it move the exisitng 10 Gig partion's data, programs, etc into it, then resize the 10 Gig partion down to an suitable 'boot' partition (I'm aware that I sitll have to have a boot partition in order for Linux RAID to work), then perhaps increase the Linux RAID size.

Ideally I could transition this from an non-RAID system to an RAID system that takes up all the space, except the boot partition, necessary to boot with Linux RAID.

Am I out on a limb here, or is this doable? If so, any suggestion, guides, or steps that I would need to know? I've never worked with Linux Software RAID before. At work we have Windows Machines with hardware RAID.

Thanks,

Doable with RAID1. If you want RAID0 you'll need a place to keep all your stuff.

The Root RAID HOWTO over at tldp.org goes into the details and is far more in-depth than what i could post here.