Hello,

I have a machine that has software based RAID. One of the hard drives failed. The problem is that the old systems administrator created LVM and then RAID. My understanding is that RAID had to be created before and then the LVM's. Is there someway to install the new drive without loosing the data?

My manager is off the opinion that I will have to create the RAID and then LVM thereby loosing all data and will be forced to copy it over from our backups.

Hence I decided to ask here before proceeding...

What is the OS?

What RAID level?

You're referring to this machine? If so, I'd say take the opportunity to rebuild it properly. Take a current backup of the data, and rebuild the LVM on top of the RAID, before you restore the data.