raid existing hard drives

[andermic]

I was wondering if it was possible to raid two hard drives that already have data on them, im not able to get rid of all the files on them, and I assume that this isnt possible due to the nature of raids, but maybe there's a way. There is always a way. oh, and the two hard drives are identical if that makes a difference.
thanks

[Hayl]

for true raid u need at least 3 disks. 2 disks if you "raid" them are mirrored unless you are just joining the two into one volume in which case they aren't redundant.

if you want to do something like that then you need either a raid controller or use software raid.

you would likely need to copy the data off and back on to set it up if both have data.

[andermic]

What about using LVM... is it worth it to look into that?

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

You could use software RAID. However, in order to set up the RAID, you will need to get all of the data off of the drives.

Your only options for 2 drives would be RAID 0 or RAID 1. If you want redundancy, RAID 1 would be the way to go-- that's mirroring.

[hardcore]

I thought with two drives you could do RAID 0+1, aka striping and mirroring? You get benifits from both sides, but not to the same effect as one or the other.

[Morphine Drip]

actually you need 4 ....raid 1+0 or raid 10......raid 5 can use 3


mirroring or striping needs an even number of drives