I have a 6 disk (2TB each) mdadm RAID 5 volume created in Ubuntu 12.04 Server. However, I'm moving to a different solution and want to "unraid" my disks but keep the data. Only 50% is in use.
From what I can surmise I basically have to do this recursively for each physical disk.
- Fail the disk
- Format the failed disk
- Move a portion of files to the new disk.
- Reshape the array
- Shrink the logical volume md0
This seems like a very time consuming process. Is there an easier way to do this (automatically perhaps) without buying new disks to temporarily hold the data?
I am also aware that during this processing my RAID volume will be degraded and vulnerable the entire time. I am not too concerned about this and will be using battery backup and moving the most important files off first.
Thank you for your help!
Best Answer
What I ended up doing was repeating this procedure until I had all of the files off.
After this is all done I did the following:
All went well and I didn't even loose any data. Obviously you should back up your data, but in my case backing up 6TB isn't really feasible. Therefore, I was willing to take the risk. There were a lot of vulnerability points to this process and it takes a long time. I'd urge you to only do this with data you either have backed up or can easily recreate.