Convert RAID 0 to RAID 10 - Perc5/i

I know of no way to do this.

I cannot remember but if it holds 8 drives maybe you can put in the new drives create a clone on to the new array and then boot to it. This is all theory.

it only holds 4 drives...
so im trying to get creative to get this done without a reinstall
my other option is:
- replace one drive at a time (wait until each rebuilds before replacing next)
- expand the virtual drive
- repartition using special tools
- pray for the best...

I do not think that will work. If I am not mistaken if you pull a 36GB drive and replace it with a 300GB drive it will only use 36GB of that drive in the array. All drive have to be the same size so it take it down to the smallest of all the drives.

So when you got done you wold have the same raw space as before. There woudl be a lot of un-usable drive space. It would have nothing to do with the partition size.  

not possible, you cannot 'change' a raid array to another type. I take it you have only 4 slots to play with.
You could try ghosting it with a product like Shadowprotect (very nice, works well with bare metal restores too) then build your new array and copy it back.
Alternatively you could fail the array one disk at a time and replacing each with the larger device, let it rebuild then do the same for the other 3 and then look at extending the partition when all is rebuilt ok.
High risk either way. Why not buy another controller and create a new array and leave the os on the old array.

The server will be down anyway during this procedure. I'm not so worried about failure, I will take a complete backup first...
Does the PERC 5 support expanding the RAID container?
Once the container is expanded, I will deal with repartitioning with a third-party tool

I have a lot of experience with the Dell raid controllers. Unfortunately, there is no way I know of to check in advance whether you can expand this array or not. The option you are looking for can be accomplished with the Reconfigure option in Server Administrator. This is only available in that software if you have installed the Storage Management component. If you did not, you can add that from Add/Remove Programs with the disk. This function usually expects you to add drives to complete the process. I have seen times, however, when you could go into the advanced wizard and choose the same drives that are in the system but simply change the size of the array. If it will give you this option, you can let the array finish the reconfig and the array will be expanded. The catch is that this has NOTHING to do with the partitions as stated before.

Thanks all...
I think I have the solution---
I will backup the entire system using clonezilla
pop out all 4x36gb hard drives
switch to the 300gb hard drives
recreate the array RAID 10
restore the backup with the partitions
make sure everything works
reboot and use gparted to repartition the drive to the correct size i need

thanks

So, how did the conversion go?

didnt do it yet...