Migration to Linux Software RAID while preserving existing ntfs data
 

Hello,
I have a software IDE RAID (Promise MBFastrack 133) on a Gigabyte motherboard which works fine in WinXP. The two Maxtor 80GB drives are arranged in a RAID -0 configuration and they are strictly for storage i.e, they are separated from the drive containing the OS. There is already data on this volume which I want to keep. I've read the HOW TO's regarding the deletion of software RAID support on the 2.6 kernel and these guides are good at explaining how to disable the onboard RAID functions and to setup the linux RAID but all the discussion seems to assume that the user is starting with an empty RAID volume. I'm confused as to whether there is a way in Suse 9.2 to actually preserve the NTFS data on the raid volume you create. For example would adding a hardware RAID card make it any easier? Does LVM2 only recognize linux filesystem type?

Any clarification would be appreciated.

Cheers,