I want Raid 1 on existing PC, never set one up before.

C

carsick

New Member
Hello. I've had hard drives go down on me before and thought I lost another one recently. I've been burned too many times so I want a complete mirror or RAID 1 setup (I do have backups, but this is also my business PC so can't afford to be down that long).

My PC:

new MSI K9A2 Platinum
320 Seagate sata drive
Vista Home Premium
2 gig 800mhz RAM
AMD 5200+ dual core
A second Seagate identical 320gig hard drive

Questions:
1. Does the second hard drive need to be blank, or will it just simply be written over?
2. Does the information on the existing drive remain on the drive or does it get deleted during this process?
3. Do I need additional hardware?
4. Do I need additional software?
5. What is the sequence of steps from a hardware and software installation standpoint?
6. Is there a tutorial/link on the actual install process that I can look at first?
7. Any other info I should know before proceeding?

As you can tell, I'm a novice at this building stuff. If you decide to reply, please try to dumb it down-way down:o. Thanks in advance for your reply.
 
Your motherboard should be capable of RAID 0/1. The second drive does not need to be blank, but be aware that you will need to reinstall Windows after. You do not need any additional hard drive besides the two identical hard drives and motherboard.
 
[-0MEGA-];864473 said:
Your motherboard should be capable of RAID 0/1. The second drive does not need to be blank, but be aware that you will need to reinstall Windows after. You do not need any additional hard drive besides the two identical hard drives and motherboard.
Click to expand...

Thx for the reply. My version of Vista is an upgrade from XP. So do I install XP first, then upgrade to Vista? Do I loose any data on my existing drive? Thx again.
 
Still no-go

I talked to the local PC store guru and he told me just plug it in and change the bios to raid, and you're done. No such luck. Guess I won't be bringing it to him to have this done. I wish the User Guide for the MB was of more use. Its really almost worthless.

Also surprised I couldn't find some sort of instructions anywhere. Is it really that hard to do?
 
you can set raid on ntfs partition if u have fat catagory then 1st convert it into nfts using command line interface with convert fs command.
you dont need any software for this thing windows have allready disk management utility.
you have allready two drives so don;t need any another hardware.
you may google search for establishing raid into ur pc..........
 
You need 2 identical size hard drives. You must do a fresh install of Windows. First is to set up raid in the bios and then install windows. If installing XP then you will need to press F6 at the beginning of windows install to install Raid driver in order for installation to see the raid setup. If Vista, I'm sure the setup is about the same, but don't know, cause i don't run vista. But i do run raid 1 on XP.
 
carsick said:
I talked to the local PC store guru and he told me just plug it in and change the bios to raid, and you're done. No such luck. Guess I won't be bringing it to him to have this done. I wish the User Guide for the MB was of more use. Its really almost worthless.

Also surprised I couldn't find some sort of instructions anywhere. Is it really that hard to do?
Click to expand...
You can do that, but you will no longer be able to boot/read from the drives.
 
This is a Dell desktop and I am looking into for my dad. I bought it with two identical HDD's hoping to mirror and not have external.
 
[-0MEGA-];864473 said:
Your motherboard should be capable of RAID 0/1. The second drive does not need to be blank, but be aware that you will need to reinstall Windows after. You do not need any additional hard drive besides the two identical hard drives and motherboard.
Click to expand...

RAID is ideally set up before you install the OS?
 
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