How do I revert from software RAID back to separate partitions?
in [General Linux]
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From: Robbie Hatley on 4 May 2010 14:34 Greetings, Group. I have an installation of Red Hat 9 Linux (the last version before Red Hat split into Fedora and Enterprise), in addition to MS-DOS-6.22 and MW-Windows-2000 (triple boot machine). The partitions are like this: Disk 1: Pri1 - Linux boot Pri2 - MSDOS Pri3 - Windows logical drive C: (NTFS) Extended partition: Slice 1 - Windows logical drive D: (NTFS) Slice 2 - First half of software RAID for linux "/" Disk 2: Extended partition: Slice 1 - Windows logical drive E: (NTFS) Slice 2 - Second half of software RAID for linux "/" What I would like to do is to break the RAID array, and revert the disk 1 part of "/" from RAID back to EXT2, and reformat the current disk 2 part of the RAID array as FAT32, to act as a liaison between Windows and Linux. (Windows can't read EXT2, and Linux can't read NTFS; but *both* can read FAT32. So a FAT32 partition would be very helpful for shuttling data between OSs, and would greatly enhance the usefulness of Linux to me.) But I don't know how to do this. Can anyone here offer some insight? -- Curious, Robbie Hatley perl -le 'print "\154o\156e\167o\154f\100w\145ll\56c\157m"' perl -le 'print "\150ttp\72//\167ww.\167ell.\143om/~\154onewolf/"'
From: Jean-David Beyer on 4 May 2010 15:05 Robbie Hatley wrote: > Greetings, Group. I have an installation of Red Hat 9 Linux (the last > version before Red Hat split into Fedora and Enterprise), in addition > to MS-DOS-6.22 and MW-Windows-2000 (triple boot machine). The partitions > are like this: > Disk 1: > Pri1 - Linux boot > Pri2 - MSDOS > Pri3 - Windows logical drive C: (NTFS) > Extended partition: > Slice 1 - Windows logical drive D: (NTFS) > Slice 2 - First half of software RAID for linux "/" > Disk 2: > Extended partition: > Slice 1 - Windows logical drive E: (NTFS) > Slice 2 - Second half of software RAID for linux "/" > > What I would like to do is to break the RAID array, and revert the disk 1 > part of "/" from RAID back to EXT2, and reformat the current disk 2 part > of the RAID array as FAT32, to act as a liaison between Windows and Linux. > (Windows can't read EXT2, and Linux can't read NTFS; but *both* can read > FAT32. So a FAT32 partition would be very helpful for shuttling data > between OSs, and would greatly enhance the usefulness of Linux to me.) > > But I don't know how to do this. Can anyone here offer some insight? > First of all, whatever you do, copy _everything_ to backup and check that the backup is correct and complete. That way, if you screw up, you can get back to the starting point. For my system, I might use a combination of find and cpio to write the stuff to magnetic tape, but what you do depends on what your backup media are. Then I would zap the hard drives completely and then partition them as you wish. I would do it with the Linux installation disk(s). I would not bother to install Linux then. Next, I would install MSDOS and check that it is working. Then I would install your Windows and check that it is working. Then I would install Linux and check that it is working. Then I would restore what you need from the backups. I cannot imagine a good reason for installing such old software these days. I know I ran Red Hat Linux 7.3 for a very long time after they stopped supporting it, but then I upgraded it to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. I also ran Windows 95 until I could not get TurboTax to run on it anymore, and upgraded to Windows XP. -- .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642. /V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939. /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org ^^-^^ 14:55:01 up 35 days, 4:21, 3 users, load average: 4.41, 4.48, 4.49
From: J G Miller on 4 May 2010 15:15 On Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 at 11:34:19h -0700, Robbie Hatley stated: > (Windows can't read EXT2 Windows can read EXT2 file systems with a little help from the IFS freeware. <http://www.fs-driver.ORG/>
From: David Brown on 4 May 2010 15:16 Robbie Hatley wrote: > > Greetings, Group. I have an installation of Red Hat 9 Linux (the last > version before Red Hat split into Fedora and Enterprise), in addition > to MS-DOS-6.22 and MW-Windows-2000 (triple boot machine). The partitions > are like this: > Disk 1: > Pri1 - Linux boot > Pri2 - MSDOS > Pri3 - Windows logical drive C: (NTFS) > Extended partition: > Slice 1 - Windows logical drive D: (NTFS) > Slice 2 - First half of software RAID for linux "/" > Disk 2: > Extended partition: > Slice 1 - Windows logical drive E: (NTFS) > Slice 2 - Second half of software RAID for linux "/" > > What I would like to do is to break the RAID array, and revert the disk 1 > part of "/" from RAID back to EXT2, and reformat the current disk 2 part > of the RAID array as FAT32, to act as a liaison between Windows and Linux. > (Windows can't read EXT2, and Linux can't read NTFS; but *both* can read > FAT32. So a FAT32 partition would be very helpful for shuttling data > between OSs, and would greatly enhance the usefulness of Linux to me.) > > But I don't know how to do this. Can anyone here offer some insight? > As others have mentioned, that's an old version of Linux - modern Linux distros can read and write NTFS pretty well (reading is fine, writing has a couple of limitations). Have you got an extra disk handy, such as a USB hard disk? Boot from a live CD, make a partition on the USB disk that is slightly bigger than than the original raided partition, and use "dd" to copy the raw ext partition from the raid device onto the USB disk partition. If the original raid was level 0, then you need to use the live CD's partitioning tools to shrink the copied partition to a suitable size (aim for slightly under the size of the software raid physical partition). Delete your raid partitions, make a new clean partition on disk 1, and use dd to copy the raw ext partition back to it. Run a resize to re-fit it exactly to the partition. Of course, you'll want to back up everything first!
From: Robbie Hatley on 4 May 2010 15:41 On 2010-05-04 12:05 PM, Jean-David Beyer wrote: > Robbie Hatley wrote: >> Greetings, Group. I have an installation of Red Hat 9 Linux (the last >> version before Red Hat split into Fedora and Enterprise), in addition >> to MS-DOS-6.22 and MW-Windows-2000 (triple boot machine). The partitions >> are like this: >> Disk 1: >> Pri1 - Linux boot >> Pri2 - MSDOS >> Pri3 - Windows logical drive C: (NTFS) >> Extended partition: >> Slice 1 - Windows logical drive D: (NTFS) >> Slice 2 - First half of software RAID for linux "/" >> Disk 2: >> Extended partition: >> Slice 1 - Windows logical drive E: (NTFS) >> Slice 2 - Second half of software RAID for linux "/" >> >> What I would like to do is to break the RAID array, and revert the disk 1 >> part of "/" from RAID back to EXT2, and reformat the current disk 2 part >> of the RAID array as FAT32, to act as a liaison between Windows and >> Linux. >> (Windows can't read EXT2, and Linux can't read NTFS; but *both* can read >> FAT32. So a FAT32 partition would be very helpful for shuttling data >> between OSs, and would greatly enhance the usefulness of Linux to me.) >> >> But I don't know how to do this. Can anyone here offer some insight? >> > First of all, whatever you do, copy _everything_ to backup and check > that the backup is correct and complete. That way, if you screw up, you > can get back to the starting point. For my system, I might use a > combination of find and cpio to write the stuff to magnetic tape, but > what you do depends on what your backup media are. > > Then I would zap the hard drives completely and then partition them as > you wish. I would do it with the Linux installation disk(s). I would not > bother to install Linux then. > > Next, I would install MSDOS and check that it is working. > > Then I would install your Windows and check that it is working. > > Then I would install Linux and check that it is working. > > Then I would restore what you need from the backups. Literally years of work. Not practical. I don't need to go uninstalling and reinstalling multiple operating systems, and backing-up and restoring terabytes of data. What I need to do is to just break a Linux software RAID array, preferably without interfering with *any* of the existing operating systems. Does anyone here know how to do that? I would imagine it could be done. The whole idea of RAID is that if something goes wrong with one disk, the data is already present on the other. So breaking the array shouldn't be that hard. I could try just erasing half the array and seeing how Linux responds to that. But I have no idea of what would happen. Or I could laboriously copy everything from / to my external backup hard disk, erase both RAID partitions, make a new EXT2 partition for /, copy from backup back to /. But I don't know how to set up Linux to look for / on an EXT2 partition rather than a software RAID array. Where's the settings for that? > I cannot imagine a good reason for installing such old software these > days. I know I ran Red Hat Linux 7.3 for a very long time after they > stopped supporting it, but then I upgraded it to Red Hat Enterprise > Linux 3. I also ran Windows 95 until I could not get TurboTax to run on > it anymore, and upgraded to Windows XP. I'm not attempting to install or uninstall any operating systems or software. I'm attempting to make an alteration to an existing system. As for the unstated implication that I should upgrade, I tried that a while back, but the latest Fedora install disk won't even run on my machine. I'll have to wait until either that bug is fixed, or if the answer to that is "never", until I can afford to replace my entire computer with something on the "approved hardware list" for the latest Linux du jour. That will likely be years in the future, or never. So in the meantime, my question remains: How do I break a Linux software RAID array? (And it should go without saying, "... without breaking the Linux installation itself, or breaking any other OSs or software or functionality residing on the same machine".) -- Cheers, Robbie Hatley perl -le 'print "\154o\156e\167o\154f\100w\145ll\56c\157m"' perl -le 'print "\150ttp\72//\167ww.\167ell.\143om/~\154onewolf/"'
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