Moving a software RAID array to a new machine

[tonysathre]

I'm looking at converting my gaming rig into another home server since I don't have time to or the interest in games anymore. My current server's specs are listed below:

AMD Athlon X2 6400+ @ 3.22 GHz
Crucial Ballistix 4GB DDR2 RAM
BIOSTAR T-Force 520 motherboard
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 250GB (boot drive)
Samsung Spinpoint F3 4x2TB in RAID5 (software RAID)
500w Thermaltake PSU
Netgear Gbit Ethernet Adapter
Windows Server 2003 R2 x64

The 4 Samsung drives are connected to this SATA controller:
Rosewill 4-port SATA controller

Below is the box I want to move the 4 Samsung drives to, including the SATA controller if need be:

Intel Core i5 750 @ 4.11 GHz
Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 RAM
Asus P7P55D-E motherboard
600w OCZ ModXStream PSU
Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB
Intel Gbit Ethernet Adapter
ATI HD5870 GPU
Thermaltake Armor+ MX case
Ubuntu 11.10 x64 - Will be installing Windows Server 2008 R2 SP2 or VMware ESXi.

I'm planning on upgrading the Core i5 box to 16GB of G.Skill RAM, and installing an Athena Power BP-SATA3141B Backplane Module to hold the drives because the Thermaltake case's drive bay had to removed to fit my GPU.

My question:

Since I am using software RAID, is it going to be problematic when moving the drives to a new machine and remounting the software RAID5 array? I can't afford to lose any data (~2.5TB) so I'm trying to play it safe before I move forward with the upgrade. When reconnecting the drives to the Rosewill SATA controller do I need to make sure each drive is plugged into the same port that it was connected to in the other computer?

Thanks a lot,

Tony

 

[WyomingKnott]

Tony

Just to be on the safe side, back up the data to one or two external drives. Even with the price of hard drives these days, its cheaper than your time having to download, rebuild, or rewrite everything that you have on the array.

 

[stoneym]

It appears in your post that you are using the Software RAID on Windows Server and are planning on a move to Ubuntu? You can't take that software RAID with you. If you were already on Ubuntu it is a simple terminal command after you get mdadm installed. But since MS does things quite a bit differently, mdadm isn;t going to recognize those drives as being part of an array.

 

[inzone]

You would need to install your Windows server 2008 before you installed your raid array since Ubuntu won't recognize it and do back it up before you do anything.