Moving a server over to a RAID

[Tom H]

On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 11:27 AM, Mike A. Leonetti
<mikealeonetti at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I have a server now that has one drive and is not set up on a RAID
> using Ubuntu 8.04.
>
> What I was going to do was boot with a Linux recovery disc, create a
> RAID1 manually with mdadm on two new drives, and then copy all of the
> data onto that then redo the boot partition.
>
> My question is, when I reboot, will Ubuntu automatically detect the RAID
> for me or are there modules I have to install ahead of time to make sure
> the RAID gets detected? Also, would anybody else handle the situation
> differently.

How many disks can your computer handle simultaneously?

If three, then boot from your current install with all three, do a
full backup, install mdam, create the raid array on the two new disks,
boot from a Live CD, copy your data to the array (you will have to
install mdadm in the Live CD environment and activate the arrray),
modify the fstab, update the initrd, and install grub.

If two. follow the same as above but create an array either with one
disk or with two disks with one missing. Once you replace the old disk
with the second new one, either grow the array or sync it.