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My desktop machine is currently running Windows XP (32 bit) on an AMD Sempron processor. For various reasons, this is far from satisfactory, & my plan is to do a complete rebuild, with Ububtu (64 bit) as the operating system.

Currently, I have two 500 GB drives set up as a RAID 1 mirror (I believe they are being supported by what's termed "fakeRAID"). Is there a procedure by which, when I have the two drives plugged into the new motherboard, I can then install Ubuntu in such a way as to have it treat them as an existing RAID 1, rather than as two separate discs? Can this be accomplished by running the software RAID manager from the Live USB device, or what do I need to do, assuming I can do anything?

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  • This isn't really a dup since it is asking about migrating existing disks to a new system.
    – psusi
    Sep 18, 2013 at 21:03

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If you don't need to dual boot with Windows, it is best to avoid fake raid. Blow the array away using the bios utility, and when you install Ubuntu, use the alternate installer to set up a conventional software raid. You also might want to use raid10 instead of raid1 as it stripes the data as well so you get better performance. For that you will want to manually run mdadm to create the array and specify either the offset ( optimized more for writes ) or far layout ( optimized for sequential reads ) instead of the default near layout ( which for 2 disks is identical to raid1 ).

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  • I don't intend to dual-boot, but that's not the point. I really would rather not have to copy all the data on these drives onto somewhere else, then start from zero, so if there is a way to keep the filesystem in place, that would be preferred.
    – recastainginator
    Sep 18, 2013 at 3:28
  • @recastainginator, if you just want to use them as data disks then they will plug and play. If you want to boot from them, then the new system has to have the same fakeraid controller as the old one. If that is the case then the question Braiam linked covers that.
    – psusi
    Sep 18, 2013 at 3:32
  • I doubt that the new motherboard will be compatible with the same RAID drivers as the present one. Although I don't have any interest in booting from either of the two partitions currently on the RAID volume, I do want to preserve them, with the data they contain, & I want to repartition the RAID volume to include the new boot partition.
    – recastainginator
    Sep 18, 2013 at 5:58
  • @recastainginator, then one way or another you will need to backup, blow it away, and rebuild the array, either using the new fakeraid controller, or linux software raid.
    – psusi
    Sep 18, 2013 at 13:29
  • So there's simply no way to, even, break the existing RAID array just before disconnecting them from the old mobo, then install the two discs with identical contents on the new mobo, & initialize them as a RAID 1 with the Linux software RAID controller?
    – recastainginator
    Sep 18, 2013 at 16:45

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