ASUS M4A78T-E and RAID

I have Windows Vista 32bit install on one of my drives. I can activate RAID in my BIOS but it says if I do that it will delete my MBR and any data on the drive (it does, I tried it :-p). I've tried setting up RAID BEFORE installing my OS, but it would never install my RAID driver for some reason. Also, my BIOS kept registering it as, "RAID 10 2x2 Total capicity 320GBs".

However, all my drives are identical 160GB drives. I thought with RAID 10 you would only have as much space as one drive?

Anyways, is it possible to install RAID 10 without reinstalling an OS?

Thanks a million!

You need 4 drives for RAID10, you can only make RAID0 (speed) or RAID1 (reliability) with just 2 drives. Also, to boot of these drives (installing Windows on it) you need to make driver diskette for Windows XP; and a CD/USB-pendrive for Windows Vista and above. Linux often allows native booting from software/onboard RAID.

2x2 drives means 4 drives. Total indicated capacity is 320GB. If you have 4 drives of each 160GB, that means 640GB total capacity. But when using mirroring (RAID1 or RAID10) you loose half capacity; so the capacity should be 320GB. Did you expect anything else?

RAID capacity:

JBOD: no space is lost. 4x 1TB disks = 4TB usable capacity
RAID0: no space is lost. 4x 1TB disks = 4TB usable capacity
RAID1: 50% space lost. 4x 1TB disks = 2TB usable capacity
RAID10: same as RAID1
RAID3/4/5: capacity equal to one disk is lost. 4x 1TB disks = 3TB of usable capacity
RAID6: capacity equal to two disks is lost. 4x 1TB disks = 2TB of usable capacity

That's it. ;-)

Configuring a RAID-array will overwrite portions on the harddrive, so no you need to re-install using the RAID-drivers and backup anything that's currently on the drive. Also, you can't expand (add disks to an existing array) with simple RAID-implementations like onboard RAID, which is what you're using i'm assuming.