Changing from RAID 0 to 5

[gt07]

Currently have 2 200gb drives in raid 0. I'm really worrying about them crashing so I'm switching to raid 5. Is it possible to just place the new drives and card into the system without losing any data already on the current drives and reconfiguring to 5?

Also, XP is on my RAID setup so in RAID 5, if a drive fails will it be able to rebuild the drive i replace the dead one with and be able to boot up into windows without any problems (at least any major problems)?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: gt07
Currently have 2 200gb drives in raid 0. I'm really worrying about them crashing so I'm switching to raid 5. Is it possible to just place the new drives and card into the system without losing any data already on the current drives and reconfiguring to 5?

This is generally not possible, unfortunately.

Also, XP is on my RAID setup so in RAID 5, if a drive fails will it be able to rebuild the drive i replace the dead one with and be able to boot up into windows without any problems (at least any major problems)?

It wouldn't be much good otherwise, would it? A drive failure should cause no problem other than a performance degradation; if you have hot-swappable drives, you could switch in a replacement without even having to power the system off...

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: gt07
Currently have 2 200gb drives in raid 0. I'm really worrying about them crashing so I'm switching to raid 5. Is it possible to just place the new drives and card into the system without losing any data already on the current drives and reconfiguring to 5?

This is generally not possible, unfortunately.

Also, XP is on my RAID setup so in RAID 5, if a drive fails will it be able to rebuild the drive i replace the dead one with and be able to boot up into windows without any problems (at least any major problems)?

It wouldn't be much good otherwise, would it? A drive failure should cause no problem other than a performance degradation; if you have hot-swappable drives, you could switch in a replacement without even having to power the system off...

What he said, plus if you were actually able to run RAID-5 (three drives minimum I'm afraid), then you could set up a fourth drive as a hot spare, and have it kick in automatically if one of the drives failed.
RAID-5 is best left to the SCSI market, to be honest

 

[PsharkJF]

RAID 1 would be better, honestly.

 

[jose]

Just use your drives a regular drives w/ no raid...

Otherwise get a 3ware hardware based controller & 1-2 more drives identical to the one's you already have.

With raid 1 you'll loose 1/2 your storage. ie you'll have only 200gig., w/ raid5 in a 3 drive config you'll have 400gigs. (loose 1 for parity)

Regards,
Jose