How do I delete the RAID on my Mac Pro without trashing the data?

[SaxPlayer]

I wonder if anyone can advise me on the best approach to achieve the changes I want to the way my data is organised on my Mac Pro?

First off, here's how it's set up at the moment:
250GB boot drive for OS X Tiger
500GB data drive 1
500GB data drive 2

The two data drives are set up as a mirrored RAID in case one of them turns up its toes.

This is what I want to get to:
250GB boot drive for OS X Leopard
500GB data drive
500GB Time Machine drive

So, in a nutshell, I want to get rid of the RAID array without trashing my data and use Time Machine so that my boot drive is backed up as well as my data drive and I have the "time machine" features not available with a traditional mirror.

If I remove data drive 2 so OS X thinks the drive is dead and then plug it into my spare bay then will I effectively be able to see both copies of my old RAID on data drives 1 and 2? I'm thinking that then I could delete the array, format data drive 2 and make it my Time Machine target.

Or am I over confusing things?!

Before you ask, I've got a 250GB USB drive to which I've "SuperDuper'd" my boot drive ready for my upgrade to 10.5 and an old NAS drive onto which I'm going to copy my data (just in case). As I've only got a 100-Base ethernet network I don't really want to copy the data back from the NAS to the Pro as this will take so long to do - although I will if I have to!

Any ideas?

 

[Zoowatch]

I don't see how u can easily do that without deleting your data first.

Get a 500GB external HD drive.

 

[mauldus]

You can't do that. If you drop the raid, your data will be gone. You need a spare drive to copy the information from as a backup

 

[SaxPlayer]

You can't do that. If you drop the raid, your data will be gone. You need a spare drive to copy the information from as a backup

I feared that may be the case. Not to worry. I had a brainwave on the way home in the car tonight and this evening I've partitioned my USB 2 drive and re-SuperDuper'd my boot drive to one of the partitions leaving the other one free for my data. This avoids the need to use my *slooooow* NAS drive for the purpose. Then I can delete the RAID, install Leopard, move my home folder to the data drive and copy my data from the second USB partition to the new locations.

OK. So this is a great deal of hassle but upgrading the OS seems like a good time to do this if I'm ever going to!!

Thanks for the answer to my query.

 

[CWallace]

You should be able to break the RAID 1 set. I know you can do it in Windows, so you have to be able to do it in OS X.

If it was RAID 0 or RAID 5, you'd be doomed.

 

[SaxPlayer]

Thanks for the advice, including some that was obviously well intentioned but as it turned out incorrect.

As suggested by CWallace, when I deleted the RAID, OS X simply mounted the two drives as separate items with identical data. All I needed to do to configure my system as I wanted was to format one of them and then tell Time Machine to use it as my backup.

Trust Apple to make this task simple and painless. I should've known better

At least now thanks to Time Machine I have a complete system backup (including the OS and applications) and not just a data backup. Despite some people having the odd gripe, I have to say that I'm bowled over by Leopard and like it lots!