Temporary mass storage / backup

[AuroraUK]

I currently have 2 x WD 6400aaks caviar blue HDD's in RAID 0 on a LSI PCIe 8x 8 port card and was wondering is there an easy way WITHOUT risking loosing or accidently formating or screwing up the RAID 0 array when adding an additional 2 matching HDD's???

I would prefer backing up somehow the data i have before attempting this, if i loose the data i swear i will cry for days.... no weeks!!! I have 800GB to back up that i need done as cheaply as possible, DVD's work out too expensive and will be too much time consuming.

Im adding the extra 2 drives not so much for the extra space but for the extra performance. I move a lot of large files around, extracting, compressing etc ... works that makes my HDD's sweat lol

Does anyone have any ideas???

 

[crazy pyro]

Stick the other two in but don't add them to the raid array, then you could just use a piece of ghosting software to copy everything over.
THat should work.

 

[AuroraUK]

ooooo

Sorry lol i mean what im trying to do is add another 2 matching HDD's to the existing array with the data without risking the data.

So im aiming for a total of 4 HDD's in RAID 0.

 

[crazy pyro]

Oh right, that may be a PITA, possibly you could ask someone in a local computer shop to copy everything on there over to a large external HDD for a few days, then set the raid array up and then copy everything back over?
Otherwise you're going to have to buy a large enough drive to back it all up onto.

 

[AuroraUK]

I think that would be best yh to find someone with large enough hard disk space. Backing up to DVD's would be more expensive than the hard disks, i would need approx 170 DVD's. Or for now i would have to just stick with 2 x 1.28TB RAID0 arrays.

Is there a way of perhaps uploading my data to a webserver/webspace? just for like 4-6hours??

 

[Deleted member 3]

Using RAID0 is already risking it. Your card most likely supports RAID migration, install the management software. Expect it to take ages though. (if it takes 12+ hours it's normal)

If you want to actually backup that data, buy a 1TB disk > 80 euros?

 

[AuroraUK]

Using RAID0 is already risking it. Your card most likely supports RAID migration, install the management software. Expect it to take ages though. (if it takes 12+ hours it's normal)

The only software i had with the LSI card is crap, doesnt let me do anything and it keeps asking me to login to the software for some reason??? I will have to do a bit of research on the BIOS options.

Thanks for all your suggestions so far

 

[Deleted member 3]

Download other software form the LSI site. Besides, why are you using such an expensive controller for a simple RAID 0 array?

 

[AuroraUK]

Download other software form the LSI site. Besides, why are you using such an expensive controller for a simple RAID 0 array?

I have looked on the LSI website but there is nothing of interest.

And believe it or not the LSI 8208LEP PCIe 8x controller card was 'given' to me by a friend, he has more money than sense, he bought the card for a striped array of 6 WD Velociraptors and 2 large backup disks but discovered that the card only supports SAS and SATA2 HDD's, Useless with the WD VRaptors.