Question about RAID1

[InfernoFS]

Hi everybody. I’ve just bought an extra hard drive of 250GB and I already had one of 120GB.
I'd like to put them in RAID 1 to backup My Documents in a easy way
But I’m not familiar with RAID.
Can somebody answer the following questions?

Is it possible to put a hard drive of 250 GB in RAID1 with a hard drive of 120GB and mirror the one of 120GB on the 205GB HD AND use the free space (250>120) to run XP and other software?
Or do I have to make a partition on the biggest hard drive to make this possible?
And then again, is it possible to put a “partitioned” hard drive in RAID1 without causing problems?

 

[Grimmy]

I'm not totally sure...

But in Raid 1, you can do that with 2 drives. The catch here is, they both have to be the same capacity or the same size as the smallest member. (120)

Not sure if you can used the rest of the 130 gigs... since Raid 1 is an array of 2 drives acting as 1.

Lil stumped on the wasted space, if it could be used.. it's been so long that I can't remember crap anymore. Especially this early in the morning. :lol:

I'd advise making Raid 0 for both, and using the 120 as a backup.

Edit:

FAQ RAID

That also should help some.

 

[InfernoFS]

thats pretty f***** up
What should i do then
sell my 250gb HD and buy 2 new onces of each 120GB???
the hd of 250GB hasnt even left its package

 

[eviltechie]

If you can afford another 250GB drive, buy that and RAID 1 it with the other, keep the smaller drive to run Windows.

If you can't, return the 250GB drive and get a smaller one. Are you sure your system can even run 250GB drives without an additional controller card? Many systems are limited to 137GB.

 

[Hawkeye22]

If you plan on using the array as the system/boot drive, you'll most likely need to reinstall the OS. If this is the case, you may want to get two 250g drives. Also, like eveiltechie said, make sure your system can support large drives.

 

[nobly]

Why don't you just give it a try?
Theoretically its possible. In practice however, I would guess that you would start to see some slowdown for hard drive accesses, especially to the 250GB drive. The RAID controller may not let you do it.