Migrating from Raid-1 to Raid-0

[BullGod1]

Hey all,

I am renting a dedicated server that has 2 SSD drives in a Raid-1 configuration. Windows Server 2008 is the OS.

The nature of my business does not require data safety and since SSDs are much more reliable than traditional hard drives, I'm considering Raid-0.

The problem is that I do not have physical access to the server, and any managed assistance is extremely costly. I am in other words limited to the hardware and software I have.

So my question is how I can migrate from Raid-1 to Raid-0?

The only thing I can think of is to do the following:
1. Shrink the partition in half.
2. Create a new striped partition with the new half.
3. Somehow (ideas?) ghost the initial partition over to the new one.
4. Restart and run the ghosted Windows.
5. Delete the old partition.
6. Extend the new partition back to SSD size.

Would this work? If yes, ideas of how to do step (3)?

Cheers!

 

[Janus67]

I'm willing to bet the RAID is hardware and not software. You won't be able to do it without (possibly, and this may not work) just taking a ghost image of the volume and then putting that image down onto the server after the RAID configuration is deleted and re-created as RAID0.

 

[BullGod1]

No, its software Raid. Are you saying my idea wouldn't work?

 

[BullGod1]

Anyone?

 

[deathman20]

Is the reason you are doing this for space reasons?

Not sure you can expand Raid 0 partitions.
As for Ghosting the existing partition... well when you do that it is done in DOS, so don't think it would be possible unless you where on site.

 

[Tyerker]

If RAID 1 is a simple redundancy, is there a reason you can't just wipe the non-primary drive? I'm not sure if things can be striped efficiently if they weren't striped from the beginning. Perhaps move the whole image to a separate drive, then format the SSDs and set up the software RAID, then move the image onto the RAID partition?

 

[Automata]

I think switching it to RAID 0 is a very bad idea. Solid state drives can still fail or drop out, which will render the server inoperable.

How do you know it is software RAID? Is Windows 2008 reporting this? If it was hardware RAID and you had access to the sideband management interface (iDRAC if Dell, LightsOut if HP, etc), which you should, you could recreate the RAID array outside of the operating system. This would leave you with two options: either reinstalling the OS from scratch or creating an image beforehand and restoring it after recreating the array. The latter is more difficult because you will require storage for the image.

If this is software RAID, I have no idea, as I wouldn't touch it, nor would I pay for a dedicated server that had it.

 

[Bobby]

Simple answer: No.

Raid0 is striped drives and you can't read one drive w/o the other. Raid1 is mirrored and either drive will work as a stand alone.

SSD's aren't as relaible as you would think unless you live in a bubble and only read and believe product specs. I have one, possibly 2, flaky SSD in a Raid0 after 1.5 yrs working 8-12hrs a day.

You don't mention the purpose of the server so I can't give you advice whether you need the speed over reliability even though you mentioned that data safety isn't important. Is it for capacity? Still a bad idea. Just not enough info to give you good advice.

-ex-managed services site manager (long, long time ago in a place far away)

 

[TransformedBG]

you could just add 2 more drives and go 0+1