Is a mirrored C drive a possibility?

[sdorshan]

I want to upgrade my C drive to a mirrored pair.

I've been using an IDE drive as my C drive on Windows XP Pro. I bought two 1TB SATA drives, which I would like to use mirrored, as RAID1. I would like these drives to function as the C drive, if this is possible. My Mobo is a Biostar P4M4900-M7 SE with a VIA controller.

I see the Bios setting for RAID, but I don't know what Raid levels it supports. I'm not sure of the procedure for setting up the new drives, getting the right drivers installed, and getting the system to boot with the RAID drives.

I have Partition Manager, and I've already copied my old C drive contents to one of the SATA drives. Do I need to replicate it on the second drive before setting them up as mirrored? And then what?

Is there a good tutorial for this?

My computer does have a floppy drive, if that is needed for installing drivers.

I'm also willing to use Windows' Volume Manager. I saw something about needing some extra files to support RAID-1, but it was never clear if I could set this up as the boot drive. (I have XP Pro.)

I really don't want a separate boot/os drive and data drive. Too many pieces of software rely on things being on the C drive, and I do not want to have to reinstall everything.

Thank you for any assistance,

Scott

 

[r_manic]

Yes, you can do so, but at the very least you'll have to reinstall the OS.

Something I always recommend to people who want to RAID is to get a small drive for your OS. Never make a RAID array your boot drive, so that if the RAID fails, you can at least still boot up.

 

[c_schwab]

I would create the RAID array first, then transfer all of your files to the array.