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In 2008 or 2009, I put together a server that had four 200GB disks in RAID 5. The server doesn't work any more, but I still have the disks.

I can't easily put all of the disks into my current system at the same time, but I could put them in one at a time.

Is it possible to copy their contents to another drive, as a file or as a partition, and then reassemble the array from the four copied drives?

Also, I am not sure what file system I used on the array. It was probably ext3 or ext4. Can I non-destructively probe for the file system once the array is assembled?

I assume the order that the drives / files are listed in the mdadm command wouldn't matter?

James Barton
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1 Answers1

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You can copy the disks with the dd command into files (or partitions which might even be better): take care to copy each disk as a whole (and not only some partitions of them).

You can assemble with mdadm the new files or partitions as you suggest. I think you are right: their order should not count.

Trying to mount partitions with another file system does not ruin them (it simply won't work).

lemonslice
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