RAID 5 Installation

Hi,

I am gonna install RAID 5 on 4 live servers .. need help with it.

the current setup is working and is running win2k/exchange/sql etc...
the current server has 2 HDD and a onboard SCSI controller.

I want to add 1 more HDD in each of the servers along with a IBM ServeRAID controller card and then implement RAID 5 on all of them.

is there any way I can restore the OS and the softwares installed on them without re-installing using Acronis or Ghost ?

if I create a image of the entire HDD and restore it using ghost or acronis on the newly initialized RAID 5 will I be able to run the Repair setup and specify a new HDD controller (F6 option)

thanks a lot guys ... any inputs will be much appreciated.

I dont want to touch the existing setup which is running fine (70+ users on AD, sql, exchange)

thanks again

sameer

So you currently have two single drives and you want to add a third drive and set up RAID5 on the fly? I think that's going to be pretty much impossible.

You might be able to use something like Ghost or Acronis to copy partitions off the current drives, then create a RAID5 array and put those partitions back. You'd need something like BartPE to do it though -- neither tool deals well with RAID arrays on its own. Then again, it might not work either, and the only point at which you'll know for sure is after you effectively wipe all the hard drives... Even if you install the ServeRAID drivers before you take the images, you'll still need to repair the boot bits.

It would probably be simpler to look into adding two hard drives to each system and setting up a pair of RAID1 arrays. I'm still not 100% sure how you'd go about it with any certainty though; replacing a hard drive controller is pretty major.