Raid 1 help : want to take out a drive

[DotheDamnTHing]

Hello all

I have two drives in a raid 1 config. I want to take one drive offline and use it for another purpose. Is this at all possible? I have the data backed up elsewhere and just wanna free up one of the drives.

It is a LSI PCI card...nothing fancy with 2 WD500GB drives

thanks

 

[DotheDamnTHing]

oh i just noticed this is in the wrong section...maybe one of the mods could move it?


I'm assuming you want it moved to "Memory and Storage"? Moving it there.

RebateMonger - AnandTech Moderator

 

[MichaelD]

Yes, you can do that and you will be fine. Removing the drive has the same effect as the drive dying and the RAID controller and RAID1 array doing what they're supposed to do; keep running. Being that it's an LSI card and not an on the motherboard solution, you probably have some kind of management software on the system that keeps track of the array/makes rebuilds. This software may limit the performance of a single drive...might even lock it down until you "replace the dead drive." I don't know what you've got loaded on there; I'm just making you aware of the possibilities. Ergo...

Before doing anything, make a full back up of any data you can't live without. Preferably, make a ghost image of the drive and store it somewhere other than those two drives. I keep a 1TB external HD handy for these exact type purposes.