Question Worried About Losing Software RAID Mac OS X

[Shalashashka]

Hello all.
I currently have a Mac Pro with a 120 GB SSD for the boot drive. I also have 3, 2TB HDDs in software Striped RAID set.

I need to replace the SSD boot drive with a bigger SSD.

I am running Yosemite and have read elsewhere that since 10.7, it is not a good idea to clone a drive. So I guess I need to do a fresh installation of Yosemite on the new drive.

But I am worried that I will lose my software RAID with the new install of Yosemite. I can just reRAID the drives, but I am afraid that I will lose the data on them, which I cannot do. Also, since it is 6TB I don't have enough external media to backup the whole thing.

So my question is this: If I do a clean install on a new SSD, will I have to redo the software RAID, and if so, will doing that erase the drives?

 

[ss202sl]

There's a risk(of losing data) whenever you do something like this. The only way to make sure you don't lose data is to have a backup - which you should be doing anyway but especially since you have a striped array.

 

[McHenryB]

It is just plain crazy to have 6 TB of (presumably) important data without having a separate, tested backup. One day you will lose that data - it may be (in reality almost certainly will be) the day that you reinstall the OS. If you need to replace the SSD then clone it. It may not be a good idea (not sure why that should be so) but it's a damn site better than risking your data. And make backup plans real soon now.

 

[Shalashashka]

Now that I've looked through what I have, I do have most of it backed up. I use an NAS system that I thought wasn't working right, but I got it going. So I do have backups. But I still really don't want to lose what's on the RAID as it would take many hours to copy over 4 or 5 TB of data from a backup. From doing some more google searches it looks like if I don't change the physical position of the drives Disk Utility should recognize the RAID and rebuild it without losing data.