converting from a single instance database to RAC

I have not installed RAC yet. I am supposed to get some development hardware next week. So at this point all I have done is read the docs. This is for Oracle 10.2.

In production we will start with a primary database and a standby database each with a single instance. When we get additional hardware we are going to make each of them 4 node RAC clusters.

Is it possible to turn off the redo apply on my physical standby database and convert this to a RAC database, then switchover, catch up the apply and make this the primary databse? Then install RAC on my former primary and switch back?

Or do I need a brand new installation and a brand new database for a RAC install? One of t he guys here who used RAC always used import/export to move data from a single instance to a RAC install. I would guess I could at a minimum use transportable tablespaces right?

Also we currently have our production database on Redhat 4.0. For RAC we are discussing using RAW partitions which is what is what appears to be recommended by Oracle for RAC. Can we just copy the datafiles from Linux File systems to RAW partitions?

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l