Undo Raid 0

[michael_92]

Hi guys,

I want to re-install my windows without losing any data, now usually this would be easy for me, however on my current system I'm running 3 hdd's
1 500GB serving as my OS disk, and 2 500 GB HDD's in Raid 0. the raid disks also contain all of my data e.g. games music movies and so on.

how would I go about re-installing windows without losing the data on my raid setup?

(also, would it be possible to install windows 7 on a raid 0 setup?)

Thanks in advance,

Michael.


(I wasn't quite sure where to post this, so if it's in the wrong place I'm sorry)

 

[Burodsx]

I used to run a RAID 0 with Windows XP. I haven't heard of any issues doing this with Windows 7, it should be fine.

I would use an external HDD to transfer any important files, then format all the drives. If there are any programs you can easily download or games you can install with the disk I wouldn't back those up. A little spring cleaning is probably needed anyhow.

Why do you have "all your data" on a RAID 0? Files like music, movies, pictures, and documents really need to go on a single drive or a RAID 1 so it's safer. I made this mistake with a 4x HDD RAID 0 and I had an issue that caused me to lose everything. The speed advantages of a RAID 0 don't really do much for those types of files anyhow.

If you're looking at keeping your current drives I would either consider a RAID 1 for data storage or making all 3 drives a RAID 0 with an external HDD for important files.

A little more than what you asked for, but hope it helps.

 

[michael_92]

ty for the response, but since I download a lot I had to put most of my data on the raid disk, simply because my original one is full.... also I run all of my games from that raid disk. but the problem I'm faced with is that I don't have another HDD big enough to make a full backup, hence the question whether I could re-install that second HDD without losing data on RAID 0

 

[clarkjd]

ty for the response, but since I download a lot I had to put most of my data on the raid disk, simply because my original one is full.... also I run all of my games from that raid disk. but the problem I'm faced with is that I don't have another HDD big enough to make a full backup, hence the question whether I could re-install that second HDD without losing data on RAID 0

And thus you see one of the problems with RAID. If you put a new HDD in and load your OS to that, you have to install the RAID drivers before your PC will do anything RAID related. There is no guarantee that your existing RAID setup will be recognized by the new OS install. Also a new install of Windows would require a re-install of any other programs and games anyway.

If you MUST go RAID, I recommend RAID5 for best balance of speed and fault tolerance.
with RAID0, you have doubled your chances for a loss of data for a small increase in speed. If you lose one drive, you have lost ALL the data on the RAID array!
RAID1 gives you fault tolerance but no speed increase Drives are simply mirrored(duplicated)

Again, your safest bet in this scenario, would be to backup your RAID1 array before you do a re-install of your OS.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news