Linux – breaking mdadm raid and moving to NTFS

linuxmdadmntfs

I'm running Ubuntu 8 something and my data is on a mirrored pair of 1TB disks formatted as ext3, and the RAID is via mdadm. I want to move to Windows 7 (yeah yeah I know but Linux aint doing it for me at the moment) and migrate the disks to NTFS. My plan is:

Break the MDADM RAID (by failing one disk logically)
Format the 'failed' disk as NTFS
Copy data from the RAID array to the NTFS disk (dont care about perms)

Install Windows, (new separate non RAid disk) and my data disk is available.

I've researched this and it seems the easiest way. I dont have another disk to back up to so I think this is my only way. Can anyone see a better/easier way?

Best Answer

Use

mdadm --fail /dev/sda<n>  (The software raid partition of drive)
more /proc/mdstat   (To verify that the partition is indeed marked failed)
mdadm --remove /dev/sda<n>  (The same partition which was marked fail)
fdisk  /dev/sda   (Then change partition type to fat32 using 't' option)

I am not sure whether you can format partition as NTFS using linux hence I suggested to change partition type to FAT. Then format using

mkdosfs -I /dev/sda<n>

Mount it and copy data from your raid partition.

Note:

  1. Change /dev/sda to /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc whereever applicable
  2. FAT32 cannot take files of size greater then 4 GB.
  3. When you format using Linux FAT partitions can be of size > 32 GB, the Windows limit does not apply. The same partition would work in Windows without any problem.
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