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Adding a secondary HD [RAID]

skyboxskybox Registered User regular
edited March 2009 in Help / Advice Forum
Recently, I have come in to possession of a nice SATA drive that I'd like to add to my system to dump stuff on for a reformat. Trouble is that I apparently created some kind of raid table using my single hard drive. Don't ask me why. Now, I'm aware that the only way I can add this second drive to the raid table is by destroying the original, thereby trashing my existing Windows installation - at least, I believe this to be the case. Anyway, it seems my motherboard comes equipped with two completely separate raid controllers. My hope is that I can add the second drive to this controller, windows will see the drive, allow me to move shit on to it, and all will be right with the world again. Is this possible? Am I way off?

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Posts

  • proXimityproXimity Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    You should be fine plugging it into any port that isn't part of the RAID controller, it'll just show up as a drive like normal, and you should be good to go.

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  • BowenBowen Sup? Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    You should even be able to add it to the existing raid controller, just initialize it separate from the other one as a default JBOD array, instead of trying to mirror or stripe it.

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  • skyboxskybox Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Marvelous. Now, for future reference, when I do reformat, which option would be the best for me in terms of efficiency? To combine them in to one giant drive, or leave them separate?

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  • skyboxskybox Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    bowen wrote: »
    You should even be able to add it to the existing raid controller, just initialize it separate from the other one as a default JBOD array, instead of trying to mirror or stripe it.

    Eh..I tried to fiddle around with it. I'll admit that I didn't know exactly what I was doing, but I ended up losing my MBR, and had to use my recovery disk to get back in to Windows.

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  • skyboxskybox Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Ok, so I just set it up as a JBOD drive on the other controller. Now, what I want to know is how I am to go about moving my shit to this drive, formatting, then some how being able to span the two drives together without losing anything. Is this possible? Is it even recommended? I'm not sure how I feel about the possibility of my entire array faulting and my data being lost because one of the drives failed.

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  • proXimityproXimity Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    It shows up as a separate drive in My Computer, right? Just copy your files to the new one, you shouldn't have any problems.
    I would recommend you keep the disks separate, like you said, it could cause problems if one drive dies otherwise. Also, you won't have to do any extra data-shuffling.

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  • skyboxskybox Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    proXimity wrote: »
    It shows up as a separate drive in My Computer, right? Just copy your files to the new one, you shouldn't have any problems.
    I would recommend you keep the disks separate, like you said, it could cause problems if one drive dies otherwise. Also, you won't have to do any extra data-shuffling.

    Yeah, the drive is setup fine, and I'm able to move files on to it with no problem. However, when I setup the drive in the array configuration, I noticed I had to clear the data before it would be added. This is what I'm trying to avoid after I go about reinstalling Windows.

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  • BowenBowen Sup? Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    That's the unfortunate side effect of a raid array.

    You'd probably be better of disabling the RAID feature of the connectors in the BIOS though.

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  • skyboxskybox Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    bowen wrote: »
    That's the unfortunate side effect of a raid array.

    You'd probably be better of disabling the RAID feature of the connectors in the BIOS though.

    You can do that? Would this effectively allow me to use the speed of a SATA without having to deal with the raid tables?

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  • BowenBowen Sup? Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Dependent on your motherboard, but yes, there should be a way to turn it off (at least in every current incarnation of SATA-RAID I've seen).

    Look for legacy modes or azelarius or something like that, I honestly can't remember what it's called. You should see an option that resembles "Switch SATA RAID to PATA mode" or something.

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  • skyboxskybox Registered User regular
    edited March 2009
    Awesome. I'll give it a try. Thanks for the help.

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