Merging existing start-up disk to a new raid. How do I do it?

I have a G5 Server with three 68 gig, 15000 rpm hard disks internally and four attached RAIDS, 300 gigs, 1.5TB, 2TB and 2TB. On the three internal hard drives, one is the system disk, one is the mail database and the third was going to be a mirror of the system but I keep running out of space on the system disk even though nothing is stored on it. 20 gigs has been eaten up in the last couple of months.
Anyway, I have plenty of backups so the mirror is less import to me than getting a larger startup drive. So is there a way to migrate the existing server software drive with the extra drive without losing data? Is is better to make a bootable backup and just erase the disks and restore?
I would want to make a simple bootable backup prior to doing this. What do you suggest as the most reliable approach? I am using time machine which is great but I have never restored a system disk before and don't know if it will be glitchy. I am assuming that if I use time machine to restore the server system, I would boot from an install disk. Is that right?

Hi Mark
In my opinion the short answer would be No.
One way to do this is to clone existing boot drive onto an external firewire drive. Back up anything else you might need on the other drive(s) you are going to use in the RAID set to wherever you feel best. Boot from the cloned drive and begin to define your RAID. Presumably its a software RAID Mirror using Disk Utility?
Once you've done that clone back and test. I have used DU and CCC successfully to do exactly what you're proposing. Both worked as expected. As your share points are probably on the externally attached hardware RAIDs I would not bother unsharing any share points you have.
Can't comment on Time Machine as I have never used it for OSX Server. You may well have problems using it to restore from if your Server is also the Mail Server. Possibly Open Directory might also pose a problem? One way to find out is to try it. I would make sure you have at least two fully working bootable backups of the server as it stands prior to the restore before doing this.
One thing you should bear in mind about backups. You can backup all you want but the true test is a restore when disaster strikes. All the backing up in the world is not worth anything if you can't effectively restore. This is something a lot of people forget.
If there are share points defined on the XServe's internal drives it might be best to unshare those first before cloning. You can always re-define them later on. Don't forget to enable ACLs on those volumes if you're using Tiger Server. ACLs on Leopard Server are enabled by default - or should be.
man fsaclctl
For more information.
It works best if both drives are exactly the same make and size. I have seen some (admittedly not often) problems when mixing drive manufacturers. Not all drive makes are exactly the same size as each other. For example an 80GB Samsung might return 76.7GB when formatted whereas a similar sized Hitachi might return 75.4GB.
Hope this helps, Tony

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https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.7_lion?view=discussi ons

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