Drive Swapping in a RAID array

[pixelmxr]

Please excuse the length of this, I want to answer as many Qs up front as I can to reduce the need for followup before solutions can be offered.

I have a Dell 3100 Precision Workstation w/12 gigs of ram running WIN7 PRO. IThad a RAID 0 (as I understand it) in 4 drives of 250gigs each.

I have several external drives ranging in size from 1TB - 3TB. I swapped 3 of the 250G drives for 2 of my 1TB drives w/data on them & a 3TB drive that was wiped and needs to be reformatted.

When I reboot I get an error stating a drive is missing & depending on how i connect the drives 2 drives are missing.

CLEARLY I am missing something HOIWEVER I simply want to be able to see these drives in my system. I'm not very concerned with their being in a RAID array. I have a very good backup system & the drives were setup as externals for some time.

HOW DO I RESOLVE THIS? A RAID or non raid solution will be fine, I want to avoid reinstalling WIN 7

 

[singemagique]

I do not believe you can break a RAID 0 array and expect the disks to boot outside of the full 4 disk array as the bootable image is spread across the 4 drives. One way to get a bootable image would be to boot the entire RAID 0 array and image it to a single larger disk or another array setup of your liking. Alternatively, you can break the RAID 0, lose all the data and reformat the drives and build anew (however, it seems like you want to avoid reinstalling windows).

 

[pixelmxr]

I'm very green to RAID so let me ask a Q....
My box is new and all my data is on the various external drives and that's in part intentional and due to the fact that I placed everything on externals before my old box crashed. As a result 3 of the drives are empty. If I restrict my computer to just hosting programs will that allow me to use the other space in the raid as temp RAM for programs like Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom which are ram hogs?

ALSO, is it possible to replace ONE of the existing raid drives w/a 1TB drive to expand the storage space of the raid? I don't mind reconnecting the existing drives as externals to access the data but I'd like to expand the raid if I can mix drives and I read something that said you could do that. Is that True??

I do not believe you can break a RAID 0 array and expect the disks to boot outside of the full 4 disk array as the bootable image is spread across the 4 drives. One way to get a bootable image would be to boot the entire RAID 0 array and image it to a single larger disk or another array setup of your liking. Alternatively, you can break the RAID 0, lose all the data and reformat the drives and build anew (however, it seems like you want to avoid reinstalling windows).

 

[singemagique]

I'm very green to RAID so let me ask a Q....
My box is new and all my data is on the various external drives and that's in part intentional and due to the fact that I placed everything on externals before my old box crashed. As a result 3 of the drives are empty. If I restrict my computer to just hosting programs will that allow me to use the other space in the raid as temp RAM for programs like Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom which are ram hogs?

ALSO, is it possible to replace ONE of the existing raid drives w/a 1TB drive to expand the storage space of the raid? I don't mind reconnecting the existing drives as externals to access the data but I'd like to expand the raid if I can mix drives and I read something that said you could do that. Is that True??

I do not believe you can break a RAID 0 array and expect the disks to boot outside of the full 4 disk array as the bootable image is spread across the 4 drives. One way to get a bootable image would be to boot the entire RAID 0 array and image it to a single larger disk or another array setup of your liking. Alternatively, you can break the RAID 0, lose all the data and reformat the drives and build anew (however, it seems like you want to avoid reinstalling windows).

As long as you keep your current RAID 0 intact you should be able to place the swap files for Photoshop/Lightroom on the RAID 0 as long as it has the capacity.

I haven't played around with RAID 0 for several years, so unless something major has changed you cannot easily swap in another different size drive. First, in RAID 0 all your data is more or less equally distributed across the drives in the array. So if you have 4 250GB drives and swap a 250GB drive for a 1TB drive, you are limited by the maximum space on the smallest drive (ie. 250GB). Your 1TB drive may work, but only 250GB of it will be used in the array. Second, if you want to swap a drive I believe you will first need to image your RAID 0 array to a larger single disk or array, break then rebuild the RAID 0 using the combination of new disks you wish, and finally copy the image back to the newly formed array. Finally, you can expand your RAID 0 by adding a drive (a 5th drive in your case), but you need to make sure your RAID controller supports OCE (online capacity expansion).

 

[FireWire2]

To get rid of missing drive error, remove all four 250GB out, then you wont see the error anymore.
What happen is the RAID engine see a broken RAID - some member is missing - and does its job to display an error

Since you are going to use the JBoD - Just a Bunch of Drive, then the remain 250Gb does not do anything but give you error