RAID1 help

[flan]

I have 3 HDD's right now. I have two WD 250gb and a WD 150gb RAptor which I have my OS on. Now can I set up my two 250gb's to run while I still have my OS and everything on my raptor. I was reading the mobo manual and it looked like I needed set up RAID1 when I was first setting up my BIOS. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[weilin]

ya you can
no problems.

Attach Raptor to regular SATA port on Motherboard. attach your 2 250 hds to 2 raid Ports on your motherboard. turn pc on. Go into bios and enable raid on the 2 ports that has the 250 hds. Enter raid setup utility, create a Raid 1 array. Start windows setup. press f6 to get (specify raid & SCSI controller driver). insert floppy with RAID drivers. Upload drivers. Enter windows HD Selection screen. Select Raptor drive and hit create parition. Create a parition which will be defaulted as C: then select the 250gb mirror array and hit create partition. Array should now be D:. install windows on C: and proceed like any other windows installation. After windows finishes installing. enter my computer and double click on D:, it will prompt you to format, format the array and you're good to go.

good luck. If you need any sort of help or have any other questions please ask.

This quick guide only applies to WIN XP and 2k and 2k3. Win 95, 98 and ME unknown.

 

[PCcashCow]

Just to clarify, you want to take your two 250GB drive and raid 1 them together? And leave your Raptor intact the way it is? I don't believe Weilin's steps address your question if this is what you want to do.

 

[flan]

Just to clarify, you want to take your two 250GB drive and raid 1 them together? And leave your Raptor intact the way it is? I don't believe Weilin's steps address your question if this is what you want to do.

Yes this is what I want to do.

 

[PCcashCow]

Next question, what type of Mobo do you have, and are those 250 drive Sata or IDE?

 

[flan]

I have a p5b mobo and they are SATA.

 

[PCcashCow]

You should have no problem then. The two HDDs you want to use just need to be added to the two red native Sata connectors. You'll be able to jump into the raid utility via some key board action. The select the two 250's you want to raid together. I would however unseat your Raptor while doing this just so there is no confusion. After your done make sure that you do not make the the array bootable. Connect your Raptor and you should boot in fine. I believe you'll have to take some action in Disk Management to add the volume to your system.

 

[weilin]

thx for clarification... i figured it was a new pc with a format and xp installation.

 

[PCcashCow]

Since your keeping your OS Raptor intact, by setting up a raid all your really doing is adding a 'new volume' to your system.

 

[bliq]

On many motherboards, turning on RAID involves a BIOS setting, or in some cases a jumper. So check your manual exactly how it's done.

 

[PCcashCow]

He is right, although unless you configured the onboard raid to be off, it should by default be on, never hurts to check.