Should RAID 1 require a format of the first disk?

[bamhm182]

I just bought a DLink DNS-321 last night and tossed my external 1TB hard drive in there. I'm having to format that, but that was expected as it was originally HFS+. I've already got everything backed up to my computer. However, the DNS-321 has 2 hard drive slots, I ordered another 1 TB hard drive on Newegg and was planning on installing that with a RAID 1 configuration(Mirrored of the 1TB I currently have) Does anyone know if I'll have to reformat my current 1TB when I add the second 1TB? If so, it doesn't matter, I'd just like to know what I'm getting myself into before the other hard drive arrives.

Also, it sounds like RAID1 is what I need, but what are your thoughts? I'm thinking it's what I need because I'm fine with data being the exact same on both drives. I'm basically only wanting RAID1 for protection against a hard drive failure. I don't need more than 1 TB of space, so even though the DNS-321 DOES support JBOD and RAID0, it's relatively useless for me to set it up for one of those, IMO.

 

[johnb35]

Anything is possible. When you set up raid in the bios usually it will tell you that it will delete whatever is on your original disk. That's why we always recommend installing fresh when setting up raid or changing motherboards.

 

[bamhm182]

Thanks for the reply, johnb. I decided to keep everything that I planned to move to the NAS on my computer until I got the hard drive. When I put in the 2nd hard drive, it didn't require that I format the first, only the second, and it automatically copied everything to the 2nd hard drive. However, since the new hard drive was better, I decided to have that as the first disc, so I ended up formatting anyway.