Poweredge 2950 Raid configuration question

Weigelmj,

The only thing you could do is do a System State backup of the C: drive and then create the raid 1 and restore the image to it, then delete the raid 5 array and recreate.

The supported and more stable way would be to backup and recreate the arrays and then reinstall the OS and then restore the data. The reason being is that the system state could possible cause stability issues down the road as the raid 1 will probably be a different size than the 5 so the Disk Mgmt may have unallocated space between partitions. If using 2008 it is simply resizing, If it is 2003 it is more of a process.

Here is a link to the Roll back options - support.dell.com/.../vdmgmt.html

"Can I do this without having to reinitialize the entire system?"

Yes.  Each Virtual Disk (array) is treated individually and separately from any others on the controller.

"My thoughts are to then remove the current C: drive from the RAID 5 array and extend the data drive on the RAID 5.  Will this work without having to redo the entire system?"

Kind of.  Once you remove the C: drive, you will have new Unallocated Space to work with, but you can ONLY extend a partition to adjacent Unallocated Space, from left to right, meaning you can only extend into Unpartitioned Space on the right and that if the space is to the left of the partition you want to extend, you must either backup/restore or use a third-party utility that can rearrange partitions while keeping data intact (usually not free or cheap).  As an alternate, you could set up that space as a new/separate partition for data storage.

This article http://www.partition-magic.org/hardware-raid/add-disk-to-raid-5.html tells how to add a disk to RAID 5 and extend the partition with step by step guide.  Hopes it can help you!