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Moving data across hard-drives
Æthelred
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My computer has two 250GB hard-drives. They're locked together in a 500GB RAID array. I don't really understand RAID. From what I've read, it's impossible to split these drives up without formatting them.
My problem is that one of the drives is dying.
I want to copy the data from both of my current hard-drives onto a new drive. I only have two hard-drive slots in my computer, so at any one time, I can only have 1 old 250GB + 1 new 1TB drive plugged in. How do I go about copying data over from the old drives when it'll be spread higgledy-piggledy across the two drives..? Can the data be stitched together on the new drive?
My problem is that one of the drives is dying.
I want to copy the data from both of my current hard-drives onto a new drive. I only have two hard-drive slots in my computer, so at any one time, I can only have 1 old 250GB + 1 new 1TB drive plugged in. How do I go about copying data over from the old drives when it'll be spread higgledy-piggledy across the two drives..? Can the data be stitched together on the new drive?
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Æthelred on
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So just open the case, connect the 1TB drive to the motherboard carefully while leaving it on the table, then boot up the computer and copy stuff over.
If not, you'll indeed have to get an enclosure to connect to a USB port instead.
You won't be able to do this internally if you only have SATA slots on your motherboard (though as pointed out, you probably have more), because if you separate the drives in a RAID 0 you will not be able to access the data because it's spread out across both drives.
The easiest solution would be to use an external hard drive. If you don't already have the new drive you want to use, you can just buy an external 500+GB drive (1TB external drives are pretty cheap nowadays). If you already bought the 1TB drive, you can do as thorgot suggested and just buy an external drive enclosure to put that drive in.
Do NOT take out either 250GB drive, as you won't be able to access the data without both drives in the RAID.
DO NOT TOUCH THE DRIVES YOU HAVE NOW.
They are RAID'd requiring both to work, and possibly in their original location depending on how they were made a RAID.
What you want is what was mentioned above: External enclosure with a SATA drive - copy stuff to it then make it internal.
I obviously didn't make it clear enough, but seriously, if you value your data, don't mess with your current drives. RAID 0 distributes the data across the drives and so CAN NOT work without both drives.
If you have more SATA connections that are NOT being used by your current RAID drives, you can connect another hard drive to the unused connections. If you don't, you'll want to get an external drive or external enclosure for a drive that will hook up via USB (or Firewire or ESATA if you have those available, but USB are the most common).