Setup RAID on existing Drives

[robertomad]

I want to setup a raid but all my drives have existing files on it. My question is do I need to reformat the drives before setting this up or can I just set this up without deleting files. I'm just worried that I will lose all my important files i.e. family pictures and stuff.

My System spec is
GA-X58A-UD7 (rev 1.0)
CORE I7-950
CORSAIR 12GB RAM XMS3
CORSAIR H50
CORSAIR TX850 PSU
XFX ATI 5850 BLACK ED
1 500 GB WD
1 2TB WD Caviar BLACK
1 1TB WD Caviar BLACK

Another question, If I do a raid let say 2 60GB SSD, is that going to be 120GB in total? Sorry for the stupid question.

Thanks in advance.

 

[GhislainG]

Since you have 3 drives that all are different, why would you want to use them in a RAID configuration? If you add them to a RAID, then you'll lose everything. In addition, important data should always be backed up (a RAID is not a backup solution).

Another question, If I do a raid let say 2 60GB SSD, is that going to be 120GB in total? Sorry for the stupid question.

Only if you setup a RAID 0, but I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[robertomad]

Sho does raids only works on identical hdds? The reason why I want a raids because my 500 gb is very slow I just used atto benchmark just to see the speeds of the drives and my 2tb is actually 4 times faster.

 

[GhislainG]

Drives don't have to be identical, but you may not want to use the 500 GB if it's very slow. Replacing it with a faster drive should be the first step. Assuming that you want speed and you don't care about data loss because you perform backups on a regular basis, you could use the 500 GB, the 1 TB and the 2 TB in a RAID 0 configuration to create a 1.5 TB array (3 x 500 GB). Then you could use the remaining 500 GB on the 1 TB drive and 500 GB on the 2 TB drive to create a 1 TB RAID 0, etc. You could also create a 2 TB RAID 0 with the 1 TB and half of the 2 TB, etc. While the ICH10R is very flexible, using identical drives makes much more sense. RAID 1 or RAID 5 would provide no measurable speed improvements.

Regardless of what you decide to do, backup your data as RAID 0 will significantly increase the risks of data loss. Never assume that hard disks don't fail.

 

[robertomad]

Thanks for the response. If that's the case then I'm actually better of waiting for a good ssd as all my important files are backed up.

 

[GhislainG]

It sounds like you took the right decision.