New drives looking to start RAID array

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Travis Moore

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Mar 20, 2013
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I have a 640GB Sata HDD that I have been having some issues with of late, rather than deal with fixing it, I went ahead and bought two 1TB Sata HDDs and I want to set them up in Raid 1 (I have heard it has increased random read speeds as well as its redundancy, the problem is I have no idea what I am doing.

I believe I can get the raid array set up alright by myself, but I want to know if there is any way I will be able to transfer files directly from the old drive to the new mirrored array. Will the third drive even be seen while running a raid array on the two new ones?

Running on an ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO / USB3 Mobo
 
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Traciatim

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Nov 11, 2006
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Once you have the array set up it will work just like any other drive. So if you still have the 640GB hooked in your machine then you can just copy and paste what you want just like any other normal file copy operation.

Are you sure you really want a RAID in there? On my own machines I use 2 hard drives in every single build I do. However, I just use synching software to sync important data across the drives (like my pictures and documents directories). That way it doesn't waste the space of a whole entire drive, but anything I want to protect against a drive failure is in both places anyway.
 
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Travis Moore

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Mar 20, 2013
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I am not set on using Raid, I just wanted to learn, and had heard that Raid 0 offers higher random read speeds.

Right now I am using AHCI on my three drives, with my 640GB drive set as the primary, I cannot see the other drives in My Computer, do all drives need to have an OS installed?
 
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Paperdoc

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Oct 19, 2006
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Echoing others, I strongly advise you NOT set up any RAID array until you understand their use and risks. You switched from RAID1 to RAID0 in your posts, and they are VERY different.

There is another significant issue you don't seem to be aware of. Your OS (I presume Windows) does NOT know how to BOOT itself from any RAID array unless you install the right driver for that. Right now you are using a single 640 GB HDD as your boot device that becomes the C: drive. I am SURE the OS installed there does NOT have that special driver installed in it already, so simply cloning the entire old 640 GB unit to a new RAID array will not work. You will not be able to BOOT from that new array! There are ways around this, but mostly they involve completely re-Installing your OS and all application software, PLUS using particular steps during the OS Install to get it to boot from that RAID array. My guess is this is more complex than you want. So, FIRST learn more about RAID systems and then decide whether you actually do want to use one. THEN you can learn how to set one up and re-Install all your stuff if you really want a RAID array system.

That note is based on your apparent thought of replacing the old 640 GB unit entirely with a new pair of HDD's configured as a RAID array. There are, of course, two other options:

(A) install the two new HDD's and keep the old 640 GB unit as your C: drive you boot from. I realize this will not address your concern about the reliability of the old unit, but it is one option. If you do this, you could use the two new HDD's as separate drives. OR you could use them in a RAID array that you do NOT need to boot from. In that latter case, you would have to install the correct RAID driver in your EXISTING OS (no re-Install involved) in a simple process.

(B) Plan to install both new HDD's as stand-alone separate units and remove the old 640 GB unit. No RAID involved at all. To do this you would need to clone the old unit to ONE of the new ones, making that new one the replacement C: drive. Then the other new one becomes a second HDD you can use, too. This does get you out of the concern for reliability of the old one, with no RAID.
 
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Travis Moore

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Mar 20, 2013
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Thanks for the replies, I went in and formated each one using my windows disk so they all show up now. When I said Raid 0 it was a typo, I had meant Raid 1, I do understand the difference between mirroring and striping, I was just unsure how to set it up. I looked up some documentation for my board which state that I need a USB floppy drive in order to make the driver disk to allow my raid devices to also be my boot devices. This is more work than I wanted, but at least I know how to set it up should I need to.

Thanks again for all you replies.
 
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