Raid 0 on laptop + external hdd partition as c drive

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Alex Melindy

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Mar 8, 2015
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I have a slightly complicated scenario i need help with so bear with me:
Components:
asus ultrabook laptop with model K56CA motherboard
2 750gb 2.5" 5400rpm hdd's
5tb usb3.0 external hdd

Scenario:
I have 2 hdd's with windows 8 installed, one currently in my laptop and one from my girlfriends broken laptop. I am planning to order a hdd caddy to replace my optical drive and have both hdd's installed in raid 0. I have a clone of my c drive on a partition in the external hdd, and i plan to do the same thing with my other 2.5" hdd.

Question:
Is it possible to boot from one of my windows 8 clones on my external hdd, wipe the 2 internal 2.5" drives, set them up in a raid 0 config, and restore the 2nd copy of windows to them? If so, how would I go about doing this?

Note: Cannot use a win8 disk as I dont have one and the optical drive will be removed in the process anyways.
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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Sep 17, 2012
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If you clone your Windows 8 OR Image it (you can use this program here http://www.macrium.com/ which i just did a walk though with someone on something similar that you can read here http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2692432/raid-setup-backup.html ) to an external drive, once it is backed up make the RAID 0, then use the Recovery media you make with Macrium and boot off of that with the external drive that is cloned/saved image, and either Restore the image back to the new RAID 0 or clone it back. Read up on what i said to him as well because with RAID 0 if one drive fails you lose EVERYTHING. Have a backup plain if you are using RAID 0 unless there is nothing of importance on there and you can restore or reinstall. I have a RAID 0 of my 2TB with my ENTIRE life on it from my first PC 15 years ago until now and i back it up when ever i make a big change.
 
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holyprof

holyprof

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Dec 16, 2011
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Having raid0 on a laptop is generally a bad idea. It won't speed things up a lot (it's a software raid after all) and as drtweak mentioned, will put the data integrity at risk. If you need speed, put a SSD in the caddy and put the operating system on it. If you need more space, just keep the OS on the first disk and use the second for data.

As for wiping the 2 drives, you can do that from windows setup (can run from USB drive). The raid setup is made in the BIOS for startup and after windows starts up, it takes over.

Also, windows 8 is very picky with disk images. I highly doubt the image will work on the raid array. Good luck. Let us know it it worked.
 
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A

Alex Melindy

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Mar 8, 2015
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Appreciate the feedback guys. After some hard research I have concluded raid 0 on a laptop is a bad idea haha. Im not giving a "best answer" because both of you guys offered helpful advice. I think im just going to settle for the 2 separate drives for now and possibly upgrade to an ssd down the road. As for data loss, i backup a mirror of my os fairly regularly (bi-monthly) but software raid is just crap and prone to failure.Wish there were another way.
 
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