Moving data from RAID 1 to RAID 5

[Nightblade]

Currently I have 2 WD 80 GB's drives in a RAID 1 array and would like to add in a 3rd WD 80 GB to make it a RAID 5 array. I'm running XP PRO and using a Promise Fasttrack SX4000 RAID card w/ 256MB ram on it, and I wondering if my only solution is to reformat the drives to put it on a RAID 5 array?

Everything I've seen is telling me that's my only solution.

[Midknyte]

yep. you're gonna have to blow the drives to create a new array.

[spiderman2]

Whats a raid 5?

[HaroldW]

Spiderman2:

RAID5 is striping with parity. It requires a minimum of three hard drives but can use more. I do not remember the terminology but basically as data is written to the array part of it is written to the first drive, another part written to the second drive and on the third drive parity information (to reconstruct the information just written on the 1st and 2nd drives) is written. Then it goes back and repeats the process many many times and each time the parity info is written to a drive it was not previously written to (on the last pass.) With the parity info staggered this way if one drive fails the information on that drive is reconstructed (slows down the system) in memory and can still be accessed. Furthermore, when a drive fails, you can physically add an additional drive, through the RAID management software, add it to the array and that drive then takes the place of the "bad" drive and eventually and automatically all the data that was on the "bad" drive is written to the new drive. Then since the data for the "Bad" drive is no longer being reconstructed in memory the server system speed returns to normal.

[Nightblade]

ok so now that I'm SOL about formatting the HD's, I have about 45-50 GB's of data that I need to back up to my spare 20 gigger. I have Norton Ghost but not sure how that may help me. Any suggestions? Was considering zipping the files to compress 'em

[sm8000]

You're already buying the 80, but you may need to buy/borrow another 30GB drive to supplement your 20GB backup. Other options include burning or tape drives. What kind of files are you backing up? If they're already in a compressed format like .mp3, .zip, etc., then you can't compress them much more.

[Nightblade]

well i have successfully moved over to RAID 5 land, after an intial XP install my nforce2 drivers crapped out on me (I think it has to do with one of the last XP service updates) i decided to have all the XP installation fun all over again, yeah. Working good now!