Re: OT: harddrive addition for RAID
Hi,
firstly: this is only offtopic if you're not running Debian.
Richard (richard.bown@blueyonder.co.uk on 2011-10-17 17:39 +0100):
> Hi,
> I'm thinking about adding another 500 GB HD to use RAID.
> 2 questions:-
>
> 1. does the HD need to be exactly the same as the one its being
> paired with ?
No. Assuming you're going with Linux software raid (md or lvm), you can
do partition-level raid. So even if the disks are not of equal size,
you can create partitions that are and use the remainder of one of the
disks as extra (non-raid) storage.
> 2. how easy is it to change from a non RAID config to a RAID config.
> ie. can I just put in the second HD and run something to
> automagically change the config to RAID ?
In general, it is not easy, and potentially very dangerous. But it's
not rocket science either. Anyway, you should be prepared to do a lot
of command-line typing where a single typo could possibly destroy your
system. If you are already using LVM, that makes the process slightly
less dangerous and significantly easier.
This list can help you out. Just making sure you know what you're
getting into :)
Regards and good luck,
Arno
Reply to: