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Setting up RAID 1 on 14.04 with an existing drive

I have a currently installed Seagate ST3000DM001 (about 90% full) and a new Seagate ST3000DM001 (blank). I would like to setup RAID 1
without losing the data on my currently installed drive.

If I use the mdadm process outlined in this tutorial: http://www.mysolutions.it/tutorial-mdadm-software-raid-ubuntu-debian-systems/, will my data
be preserved?

hard-drive raid mdadm

asked Sep 21 '14 at 15:47

Shayne
35 1 2 6

Also see serverfault.com/q/44574/229499 muru Sep 21 '14 at 18:03

2 Answers

It is possible, but know that it will take a bit of time for the mirror to finish since we are talking
about 3 TB. What I would do is:

1. First prepare the disk with gdisk since fdisk can not do a partition larger than 2TB. Let
us assume that the partition created was sdb1
2. Run sudo mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --force --level=1 --raid-devices=1 /dev/sdb1 .
The important part here is to tell mdadm that you are using --raid-devices=1 one disk
right now for the RAID Level 1.
3. Format the newly created RAID partition and copy everything from the original disk to this
partition.
4. Now prepare the other drive to be included to the RAID by issuing the following command
(Assuming the original drive is sda1 :

sudo mdadm --grow /dev/md0 --raid-devices=2 --add /dev/sda1

This will grow the RAID Array (md0), set the amount of devices on it to 2 (sdb1, sda1) and
add the original sda1 to it.

You can check the process of it with sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md0 it should show something
like this at the end:

Number Major Minor RaidDevice State

0 8 49 0 active sync /dev/sdb1
1 8 65 1 spare rebuilding /dev/sda1

And after it is finished:

Number Major Minor RaidDevice State

0 8 49 0 active sync /dev/sdb1
1 8 65 1 active sync /dev/sda1

I recommend a reboot after this to make Nautilus see the RAID correctly. You can verify this is
working but literally removing one of the drives while having the unit mounted and still being
able to execute or view a video in it. Of course the output of --detail above would be
something like:

Number Major Minor RaidDevice State

0 0 0 0 removed
1 8 65 1 active sync /dev/sda1

In this case I disconnected the drive sdb and still could work on the information.
UPDATE: Since util-linux 2.24, fdisk not supports partitioning 2+ TB and has support for
GPT schemes. This support has landed in Ubuntu 14.10. Apart from this, the interface has
gotten much friendlier and it supports better human readable sizes. The overall changes can
be found in:

util-linux 2.24 - Release Notes

util-linux 2.25 - Release Notes

edited Oct 27 '14 at 15:34 answered Sep 21 '14 at 17:48

Luis Alvarado
115k 116 417 596

Simple solution to a simple question. Thanks Luis! Shayne Sep 22 '14 at 13:40

When you create the raid array (and even step 1 of the tutorial said the disks are pre-
prepared.) all data will be lost. You need to create a back up of your data first, create the array,
and then copy all your data back onto the new array.

answered Sep 21 '14 at 15:55

bigsquish
1