If I setup a RAID1 during install will it delete the data?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi everbody, I will be installing openSUSE to sda. I also have an identical pair of 1TB drives (sdb,sdc) that I want to run as a RAID1. One of them (sdb) already has data on it that will be mirrored.

My question is, if I tell the installer to make them a RAID1, will it delete the data on sdb? Obviously that would not be very fun. :frowning:

Cheers.

2

Last time I tried was 11.1, then I wanted to build a degraded RAID1 set, with just 1 md device in it, with view to added mirror later.

The partitioner refused, finding this normal and sensible way of building a mirror pre-loaded with data an error. It wanted 2 RAID devices, for a non-degraded mirror! I think I filed a bug on it, but I canā€™t remember what happened.

So basically, I would just mount your data on /dev/sdb as a normal filesystem, then convert post-install to using RAID device with mdadm following HOWTOs, then add your
mirrorā€™s later.

But some ppl are more trusting of software than me, it might work. Though if you look round on forum, number of threads on RAID sets not being recognised I would not bank on it. Thereā€™s also a contribution on LWN.net to thread I read (I think on DRBD) by mdraid guy, who explains either block is equally good when they disagree, thereā€™s nothing to say the newest is better when blocks in RAID1 donā€™t match (which is indeed correct, given possibility of a ā€œcrazyā€ drive/driver writing trash but appearing to function). So the traditional way of syncing up new device to the old, would seem the only safe one.

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Well thanks. No breaks for those who like neat little solutions I suppose. But as always, better to be safe than without my music collection.

4

NEVER! I repeat. NEVER mess with partitions until you have backed up your data!

I can not stress this enough. We see folks crying about their data loss all the time. This is preventable and should never happen.

Chances are your data will be intact after mirroring the drives, but donā€™t bet your data on it.:open_mouth:

5

Thatā€™s already taken care of. No worries. Just wondering if the installers offer to let me setup a raid was going to be making my life a little easier or not.