I have two 1Tb Seagate Barracuda's. One has 600 Gb of storage on it, the other is completely blank. Can I still raid0 these together without formating the first one? I don't think I can due to how it writes the memory and all but its worth a shot asking. Thanks for your time!
Can you raid0 two drives that have data on them?
- Thread starter StNolly
- Start date
Solution
There's no technical reason why it can't be done if the drives are offline, but there's a lot that can go wrong and I do not know of any chipsets or hardware raid controllers that allow it. Some controllers allow for a single drive to be migrated to RAID0 by using a spare drive, but never two single drives with data on them into RAID0.
jwk3
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- Feb 29, 2012
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on my onboard raid it said that it would wipe/format all drives that I said to put into RAID0. it could be possible with separate RAID cards but probably not for onboard RAID (or fake RAID as people sometimes say). if you tell us your RAID card it would be much more helpful.
RetiredChief
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- Feb 22, 2007
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When you set the two drives up in raid0 config, any and all data on them is lost.
The first step in creating the drives is to partition (yes you can partition the drive). and set up the strip size, this step re-writes sets up the bases for the file allocation.
The first step in creating the drives is to partition (yes you can partition the drive). and set up the strip size, this step re-writes sets up the bases for the file allocation.
You don't "need" a hardware RAID controller to put disks into RAID. Most Intel and AMD chipsets have what's called "firmware assisted raid" which is a firmware module (BIOS OPROM, or UEFI Driver) that exposes multiple disks as a single logical unit. Without this, the data on a RAID disk would be nonsense.
Firmware assisted RAID is simply a software RAID that can be booted. All of the heavy lifting for striping, mirroring, and calculating parity is done by the CPU through either the device driver or the firmware module.
True hardware RAID controllers do all of the heavy lifting on their own, offloading that work from the CPU. As a result of their more intricate nature they may have some features that are absent from firmware or software RAID, such as the ability to migrate or rebuild RAIDs without the operating system being aware of it. In some cases, they can do it without the system even being powered on.
jwk3
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don't worry you don't need a RAID card to do RAID0. I was saying that the suggestion of only one drive needing to be wiped (by Pinhedd) could be a feature of a proper RAID card, whereas an onboard would probably just wipe them both. I'm running RAID0 on my motherboards' onboard RAID with no problems.
RetiredChief
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Little cavet:
when you select the raid bios utility, You do ot have to select the whole drive.
My prefered methold is to select only a portion of the HDDs ie Big eough for OS + Programs. Once you have created that then select the remainder of the drive and set it up.
This insures that the OS and programs are in the outer edge of the platters (higher performance).
* This is simular to what is refered to as Short stroke. ONly in true short stroke you only use about 30% of the drive and DO NOT use the remainder of the drive.
No sure about windows 8, but in windows 7:
Windows 7 will treat (in disk management) as TWO seperate drives - Drive 0 and drive 1.
If you do as most and set the initial stripe up using the whole drive, windows 7 will see only one drive, Drive 0 which you can ofcoarse partition.
when you select the raid bios utility, You do ot have to select the whole drive.
My prefered methold is to select only a portion of the HDDs ie Big eough for OS + Programs. Once you have created that then select the remainder of the drive and set it up.
This insures that the OS and programs are in the outer edge of the platters (higher performance).
* This is simular to what is refered to as Short stroke. ONly in true short stroke you only use about 30% of the drive and DO NOT use the remainder of the drive.
No sure about windows 8, but in windows 7:
Windows 7 will treat (in disk management) as TWO seperate drives - Drive 0 and drive 1.
If you do as most and set the initial stripe up using the whole drive, windows 7 will see only one drive, Drive 0 which you can ofcoarse partition.
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