Expanding a RAID 1 array to RAID 10
A couple years back, I moved from a full tower for my file server to a small HP Proliant MicroServer (I’ve been very happy with this move). When I made that move, I went from 4x750GB in a RAID 10 configuration to only 2x750GB in a RAID 1 configuration. However, I keep taking photos and I noticed I was running out of space. Since I had the extra Hard Drives just sitting around, I decided to put them back into use. the hardest part was that there are only four HDD slots in the server, and I was using one of them for the boot drive.
However, I had long noticed that there was a 5.25 inch drive bay in the server that was conspicuously unused. All I needed was an adapter. It took me two years to finally get around to this project, but today was the day! I found a drive bay adapater and SATA power and data cables, then got to work. From a physical perspective, it was fairly straightforward once I had all the parts; the hardest part ended up being finding the extra SATA port on the motherboard.
I was a bit wary when I booted the thing — the hard drives I used had previously been a part of the 1.5TB array that the other two came from. Fortunately, everything went smoothly. It was then a rather simple matter of finding this excellent guide on ServerFault to rebuild the array into RAID 10 once again.
Yay technology; internet FTW!