Help (a nOOb) change my HD setup please.

R

Rob Hawkins

New Member
I want to backup all of my data from the cheap hard drive that came in my computer using the backup feature in Windows 7 Home Premium. All my critical data is on there and must not be lost. I plan to mirror the hard drive.
I will be using two identical Western Digital hard drives that will be run in RAID0. I want to back up and mirror my cheap HD on to an external HD and keep my data there until I can mount the two new hard drives inside my case.
Then change my BIOS to RAID0. Then recover the data from the external HD on to the two RAID0 drives.

Will this plan work or smoke?

Any help and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time and knowledge,
Rob nOOb
 
It will work, however if the data you need is that important, don't put it in RAID0.

in RAID0, the drives work together, so if one drive fails, the full array fails, so you are effectively doubling your chance of failure, which is a very ill thought out thing to do with important data.

Your best bet, if your data is that important, is either:

1. To get 3 drives - 1 for your OS and programs, 2 in RAID1 for your data.

RAID1 is where the drives are mirrored, so if one drive fails you have a backup on the other drive in the array. The downside though is because they are mirrored, you only get the capacity of 1 hard drive, or half the total. If you had 2 x 500GB drives, you wouldn't have 1TB total storage, you would have 500GB, because each is being filled at the same time with the same stuff.

2. Use your external hard drive as the backup, but then you would have to manually update the files when you change them else risk losing them.

Either way, if it is important data you are playing with, do not leave it on just one drive. By doing so you are just asking for a drive to fail and all of that data which you need to fail to be usable any more and be lost forever
 
Thank you Aastii.
So, do I do the same thing I posted above? Just select RAID1 in my BIOS and restore the data from my external hard drive? Do I need to boot from my three restore discs first before running the restore from my external hard drive?
What about the drivers/firmware that come with the new hard drives.
I now have a Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB and I want to replace it with two Western Digital RE4 1.5TB hard drives.
Thank you again for your time and help,
Rob
 
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