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RAID 1 used for duplication?

Krominicon
By Krominicon
in Servers, NAS, and Home Lab
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So, a while ago I wanted to duplicate a hard drive to another hard drive but was having issues and I gave up using software. But the idea hit me, could I use a RAID 1 setup to duplicate the hard drive to the two different ones that would be the final raid setup? Or would that possibly delete things or would there be incompatibility? because they're all the same size when it comes to actual storage. But the one that I want to make a duplicate of is a 2.5" 5400 rpm while the other two are 3.5" 7200 rpm. could that corrupt my original hard drive? because if it can then I won't even try. 

some blue circle

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2 minutes ago, Krominicon said:

So, a while ago I wanted to duplicate a hard drive to another hard drive but was having issues and I gave up using software. But the idea hit me, could I use a RAID 1 setup to duplicate the hard drive to the two different ones that would be the final raid setup? Or would that possibly delete things or would there be incompatibility? because they're all the same size when it comes to actual storage. But the one that I want to make a duplicate of is a 2.5" 5400 rpm while the other two are 3.5" 7200 rpm. could that corrupt my original hard drive? because if it can then I won't even try. 

I'm not entirely sure, but I think, in order to set up a RAID array all disks must be blank prior, then you load data.

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3 minutes ago, Krominicon said:

So, a while ago I wanted to duplicate a hard drive to another hard drive but was having issues and I gave up using software. But the idea hit me, could I use a RAID 1 setup to duplicate the hard drive to the two different ones that would be the final raid setup? Or would that possibly delete things or would there be incompatibility? because they're all the same size when it comes to actual storage. But the one that I want to make a duplicate of is a 2.5" 5400 rpm while the other two are 3.5" 7200 rpm. could that corrupt my original hard drive? because if it can then I won't even try. 

Depending on the controller, there would be RAID info tables for the controller stored on the drives, so that would be an issue.

 

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

Most RAID implementations require the drives to be formatted when they're added to an array, so you'd be erasing any data on the drive. 

This would also be pretty not useful.

My native language is C++

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well dang, I guess I won't be trying that then. I just need to leave it alone until after I present for my personal project stuff for school. then I'll just set up new hard drives in a RAID 1 and reinstall my stuff or whatever.

some blue circle

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1 minute ago, tlink said:

its a tool for cloning/backing up drives, it can make direct clones of partitions to the other drives so they are identical in metadata and content.

I've tried 3 different things, and so far i haven't been successful. I guess I'll give this a try

some blue circle

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Just now, tlink said:

what things did you try and what thing are you specifically trying to copy to the other drives.

I tried to use the Acronis true image or whatever that is, i haven't played with that much, but it didn't seem to work. Then I tried hdclone, same thing, except this one thought that the source was larger than the destination, even though they were literally the exact same size down to mega bytes. then I tried a clonezilla client, that was a bit scarrier just because of the way it looked. and after that i decided not to risk losing any data and just stopped playing around with it.

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1 minute ago, Krominicon said:

I tried to use the Acronis true image or whatever that is, i haven't played with that much, but it didn't seem to work. Then I tried hdclone, same thing, except this one thought that the source was larger than the destination, even though they were literally the exact same size down to mega bytes. then I tried a clonezilla client, that was a bit scarrier just because of the way it looked. and after that i decided not to risk losing any data and just stopped playing around with it.

what are you specifically hoping to achieve? how do you verify if something worked or not? what do you want to do with the cloned drives?

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Just now, tlink said:

what are you specifically hoping to achieve? how do you verify if something worked or not? what do you want to do with the cloned drives?

So it's for my linux server. It's currently hosting a game for me and my friends, and I intend on turning it into a NAS as well later on. I'm probably putting way too much importance on the contents of it's current hard drive, but it's important to me and I don't want to lose any of the data. What had happened was that the server, a 2007 dell poweredge 840 i had recieved for free, came with 2, 3.5" 7200 rpm hard drives plugged into a raid card putting it into a RAID 1. I didn't think that this was necessary, so I removed the hard drives, and the raid card, and put in my own hard drive that I happened to have lying around. Back then it wasn't so important that the files were preserved, I could've corrupted/deleted/lost all of my data and I wouldn't have cared. It was just something for me to mess around with.

 

But now, i'm hosting a game, albeit a light ish one, on it, and I don't want to lose any of the saved files. So, my intention now is to get all of those files without changing a single thing, onto the RAID 1 setup. I'll probably have to install the raid card, with it's hard drives, so that the computer reads it as a singe volume and it setups up the hard drives properly. Then, use a linux compatible software to duplicate the 2.5" drive to the RAID 1 drives.

 

Is that too long winded? or is it not enough?

some blue circle

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1 hour ago, Krominicon said:

So it's for my linux server. It's currently hosting a game for me and my friends, and I intend on turning it into a NAS as well later on. I'm probably putting way too much importance on the contents of it's current hard drive, but it's important to me and I don't want to lose any of the data. What had happened was that the server, a 2007 dell poweredge 840 i had recieved for free, came with 2, 3.5" 7200 rpm hard drives plugged into a raid card putting it into a RAID 1. I didn't think that this was necessary, so I removed the hard drives, and the raid card, and put in my own hard drive that I happened to have lying around. Back then it wasn't so important that the files were preserved, I could've corrupted/deleted/lost all of my data and I wouldn't have cared. It was just something for me to mess around with.

 

But now, i'm hosting a game, albeit a light ish one, on it, and I don't want to lose any of the saved files. So, my intention now is to get all of those files without changing a single thing, onto the RAID 1 setup. I'll probably have to install the raid card, with it's hard drives, so that the computer reads it as a singe volume and it setups up the hard drives properly. Then, use a linux compatible software to duplicate the 2.5" drive to the RAID 1 drives.

 

Is that too long winded? or is it not enough?

No that's a really comprehensive explanation of what you're trying to do. I'm not sure if its possible. I know how to do this In software raid in linux but I have no idea how hardware raid stores metadata about the raid array because I never had to deal with it. Macrium reflect wont help you here since its just some windows tool I use on my gaming pc to make backups.

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Just now, tlink said:

No that's a really comprehensive explanation of what you're trying to do. I'm not sure if its possible. I know how to do this In software raid in linux but I have no idea how hardware raid stores metadata about the raid array because I never had to deal with it. Macrium reflect wont help you here since its just some windows tool I use on my gaming pc to make backups.

Well, I guess I'll just wait till the data is less important because right now i can't touch anything, because it all works. I have to present it for a personal project or whatever. so it's a school assignment and i'm very close to having my presentation. So if it breaks I won't have much to present.

some blue circle

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