Add old drive to RAID controller but keeping the data?

[kenw232]

Hi, I thought I'd ask before I did anything. I have a Dell Poweredge 1950 with a PERC5 controller. Its got a couple SATA drives in RAID 0 config. works fine. I pulled the drives out, put in new drives and now use the server with the new drives. no problem.

but now I want to go back. I want to put the old/original drives back in, so the RAID config will get reset again. is it possible to add these old drives back to the PERC controller without destroying the data? I just want to stick them in an boot like you would with a laptop or something. I'm not very experienced with RAID.

thanks

 

[Indigo]

The good controllers will allow you to set up a RAID array that was running once before, but you should always have backup copies of data on a RAID 0 array anyway, since without both drives, you're essentially hosed. If one of those drives died in the time between taking them out and reconnecting them for example, you'd be extra boned.

To answer your question though, I've put two drives on a RAID controller (in RAID 0) and told the controller NOT to re-initialize the array and just go with it AS IS, it worked fine. But I don't recommend the practice, especially if you have no backups of the data.