First PC build - Can I Set up Raid 1 with only one hard drive!

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setout

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Sep 22, 2015
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Hi everyone,
I have little to no knowledge of building a PC, however, my current PC is now 8 years old and the time has come for it to be replaced.

From reading other threads I know that I need 2 hard drives for a raid 1 set up but do they both need to be installed at the same time?

I originally thought I would install the first hard drive (Kingston Predator 480GB PCI-E) and set up raid 1 through the motherboard bios (ASRock X99 WS EATX LGA2011-3), install the OS (Windows 8.1) and I'm guessing the raid software would alert me of a missing drive, but the PC would hopefully still be be usable with one hard drive. When funds allow I would then buy and install the second hard drive but I have no idea if the raid set up would copy all flies from the first drive to the new drive automatically or if I would have to clone the drive before the raid setup would work correctly. Thinking in a very simplistic way I assume that installing the second hard drive is just like replacing a drive that is damaged in a raid configuration, but again I am guessing at this.

Ideally I would setup raid when installing the second drive but I read a thread that suggests that raid needs to be configured prior to the OS being installed.

Any help you can offer for the best way to proceed would be appreciated.
 
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setout

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Sep 22, 2015
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I have assumed that with raid 1 if the main drive fails, the mirrored drive will just take over meaning that I will have no downtime waiting for a replacement drive to be delivered and preforming a backup of all files. I am self employed and time off during the working day is inconvenient for my clients and costly for me, but if you know of any other options I'm open to any solution.
 
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HotPantsHenry

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Nov 9, 2014
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When you set up a mirrored raid, you will definitely know when the hdd fails and all the files will copy once the new hdd is installed.
You need to make sure that you get the exact same hdd for the replacement, but you probably knew that.
You can't mix different model hdd's in a raid. It will not work properly.

But to answer your question, yes you will be able to still access the files on the raid 1 setup as long as your first hdd is still alive and healthy.
Be sure to not use "green" drives for the raid!
I.E. Western Digital Green 500gb. They tend to use the "sleep" function when not being accessed and the raid controller might see it as malfunctioning if not set up properly.
 
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setout

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Sep 22, 2015
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Thanks for your answer. I will be using two Kingston Predator 480GB M.2 PCI-E SSD's, but will the raid 1 setup still work if one is fitted to the m.2 slot and the is other fitted to a pcie slot via an adapter?
 
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setout

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Sep 22, 2015
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Thanks for info. It is a boot raid I am after. Would a pair of Samsung SM951 512GB M.2-2280 SSD's work as boot raid or does this mean the M.2 slot and a pcie slot can't be used for boot raid at all, or just is it the Kingston Predator 480GB PCI-E drives that prevent boot raid?
 
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