On Wed, 4 Mar 2020, Tony van der Hoff wrote:
On Monday 02 March 2020 06:28:58 Tony van der Hoff wrote:
Hi,
I'm currently running Buster on a 5 year old GigaByte motherboard with
a 10-year old Raid-1 array on 2 500GB disks. Although it is running
fine, I'm becoming a bit concerned about the longevity of this
storage, so I'm planning to upgrade it to a 500GB or maybe 1TB SSD
from Crucial.
My plan would be to install the SSD in the cage, and dd the contents
of the array onto the SSD. I would then change the BIOS to boot from
the SSD, making the RAID array redundant.
Can someone please tell me whether this plan is feasible, and what
pitfalls I might encounter?
Thanks to all who replied.
Gene didn't address my problem, but made the very useful observation that
disks spinning 24/7 don't really die. Perhaps I shouldn't worry about
replacing them.
Dan gave a useful step-by-step procedure for copying at file level. This
method is slightly problematical for me as it includes "make changes to new
/etc/fstab" and "make changes to bootloader to set new root filesystem",
neither of which I feel feel comfortable with, due to lack of knowledge. I'll
certainly abandon my plan to dd the whole filesystem.
Basti and Deloptes propose to add the SSD as a third drive to the RAID. Very
attractive, but would involve complications if the SSD is not identical in
size to the old spinners.
Andrei supports file-level copying, so I'll stick to that.
Joe supports the idea of adding the drive to the RAID, but makes no reference
to dealing wth the size difference.
Alex highlights the downside of size difference.
David and Sarunas suggests doing a system reinstall on the SSD, leaving my
data on the RAID. Whilst a useful upgrade, I don't really understand how that
addresses my problem. (if I have one!)
Michael and Deloptes poo-poo that suggestion, with which I concur.
Andy suggests that I should continue using RAID, instead of reverting to a
single disk. Thank you very much for this helpful suggestion, I considered it
originally, but abandoned it on cost grounds. When I originally built this
system with RAID, 10 years ago, I was very reliant on data integrity. I now
no longer have such a pressing need, and am quite happy to rely on a single
disk, with nightly rsync backups to an off-site server. I certainly have no
need for the always-on data that RAID provides.
Finally, Geoff supports Andy's suggestion, and in addition, interestingly,
mentions NVME to replace SATA SSD. Attractive, but costly.
So, you have all given me plenty to think about, for which I'm grateful.
I guess I'll go with s single SSD onto which I'll copy the data from the
RAID.
Thank you all for helping me make up my mind.
if new drive is the same size or larger
install new drive
boot using usb drive, i use systemrescuecd
dd if=old_drive of=new_drive
