LSI Raid 1 - use 2nd drive to 'build' a backup?

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cubby_swans

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Apr 5, 2013
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I have a CentOS Linux system with a LSI raid controller. It has two 1TB drives that are configured as Raid 1. I can pull out the 2nd drive and rebuild a new 2nd drive with a blank drive with no problem.

What I want to do is use that 2nd drive, move it to an identical set up (with LSI raid card also) and make it the primary boot drive. I have tried this, and the 2nd system won't boot, and the raid configuration utility shows the drive from the first system as 'foreign'.

 
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I was going to mention to backup your data before using both disks but you have that covered.

The 9240 supports RAID configuration import. You need to scan for foreign configuration to get things going.
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cubby_swans

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Apr 5, 2013
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The LSI cards are identical. I am not sure if the system sees the disk as initialized. It shows it as Foreign and Unconfigured good.

It definitely contains data. They first system has a hot swap drive enclosure. I can remove the 1st drive and the system still runs on this drive which I am trying to transfer.
 
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Nothing_But_NAS

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Nov 13, 2012
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Which LSI card is it? The card needs to store RAID configuration on chip (NVRAM) and currently is is not aware of any RAID setup. You can add both drive to the new system and import the old RAID configuration. Then you will be able to pull one drive from the new system and put it back into the old system. You can also try running the import with one disk first to make sure you don't mess up both disks.
 
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cubby_swans

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Apr 5, 2013
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Its an LSI raid 9240-4i

Thanks, I will try to import the raid config. I have 4 spare 1TB drives. Am going to use RAID on the original system to make mirror copies of both drives and make sure the original system operates on those new drives. I have put way to much time into building this system to risk screwing up the drives!
 
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Nothing_But_NAS

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Nov 13, 2012
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I was going to mention to backup your data before using both disks but you have that covered.

The 9240 supports RAID configuration import. You need to scan for foreign configuration to get things going.
 
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cubby_swans

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Apr 5, 2013
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I totally missed the import configuration option. After making backup(s), I installed ONE drive from the original system, and 1 blank drive into the new computer. The webBIOS utility allowed me to import the config from the one drive it recognized as foreign. I then selected the option to make the virtual raid config as bootable. The webBIOS utility would not let me (or I didn't see where to) add the 2nd drive to the array. I rebooted the system, and it booted up as the original CentOS system.

I have MEGARaid Storage manager installed on the original system. Once I logged in and went into this software, it showed the raid config as degraded. I was able to add the 2nd blank drive to the RAID array and it immediately started rebuilding/mirroring it. This is what I wanted to do in the first place. Thanks for your help!

Looks like I just needed to import the configuration.
 
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