I have a HDD with a fully functioning OS on it.


If I purchase an identical HDD, can I enter it into a mirrored array with the first?


The original HDD has no raid history, but my motherboard supports it. I just needed to know if it was possible to get this drive into a RAID 1 (mirror) array without losing info.




[Edited on March 21, 2006 at 1:56 PM. Reason : mkay]

3/21/2006 1:51:48 PM

i thought for sure the creator of this thread was raige...but i was wrong



the answer to your question, is yes, you can

3/21/2006 1:55:30 PM

Quote :

"If you elect to setup a RAID 1 (mirror) configuration, you must then choose whether you wish to simply create a mirror array (if you have two blank disks and want them to be exact copies when adding data in the future), or create the array and then copy the contents of one disk to the other (if you have a data drive and you wish to create a mirror copy of it for redundancy). "

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=830&page=7
I think I found my answer.

Now my question is this: Do most/all RAID utilities offer this option?

[Edited on March 21, 2006 at 1:56 PM. Reason : ]

3/21/2006 1:56:00 PM

the good ones do

I can only speak for Adaptec, but we do support "array migration" where you can make a single drive into an array of whatever type/size you want

you can go from a single disk, to RAID-1 mirroring, raid-5, etc...

3/21/2006 2:12:37 PM

yeah every raid utility ive seen allows you to copy a drive with existing data, i would think thats the most common option anyway

3/21/2006 2:16:41 PM

Let me extend this question... I have 2 sata drives in RAID 0 on an Asus nForce4 SLI motherboard. Can I purchase 2 more identical drives and convert the RAID 0 array to a 0+1 array? Does anyone know of anyone who has done this successfully?

3/21/2006 3:07:33 PM

THE EASIEST WAY TO DO THIS IS TO BURN YOUR WINDOWS.INI TO A BLANK DVD+RW


ONCE YOU HAVE DONE THIS, YOU WILL BE EASILY ABLE TO ACCESS YOUR DATAS WITHOUT FAIL, EVERY TIME

3/27/2006 4:44:00 PM