I'm currently running WHS 2011 with a 4TB RAID 5 array consisting of 3x2TB HDDs using Windows software RAID (dynamic). The RAID volume currently holds about 1.5TB of data.
For various reasons, I'm "killing off" my home server and switching to local storage using a Drobo 5D. My current situation is that my Drobo is diskless and I have no spare large HDDs floating around, so I need to "steal" on of the 2TB physical disks from my WHS RAID array, install it in the Drobo, copy all the data from my WHS to the Drobo and then move the two remaining 2TB HDDs from my WHS to the Drobo and let the Drobo build its own array on them.
So, my question... is there a way to get WHS 2011 to "un-RAID" the existing array without any data loss, i.e. so I'm left with three separate volumes with the data split over them? That way I could simply move any data off the drive I wanted to remove. I'm guessing that can't be done though, so alternatively (and assuming that RAID 5 is going to work as it should) could I just pull one of the drives from the array so it would be identified as a failed/missing volume, stick it in the Drobo and start copying - the remaining array will just be degraded to a RAID 0 array won't it? I can't gracefully remove the HDD from the array through Windows, as RAID 5 requires 3 HDDs and this will only leave me with two.
I'm willing to take a bit of a risk with this as it's all data that could be replaced over time, stuff like ripped DVDs (hence why it's not backed up), though doing so would be tedious and time consuming so I'd prefer to not chance things too much!
Thanks for any advice!
Neil