Quad GT Raid

[Curfish]

Hi Peeps

this might be a stupid question

i have just got a new pc with a quad gt motherboard and 320gb sata hdd, is it possible to add another 320gb hdd and convert the 2 drives to raid zero, without reinstalling vista x64.

thanks in advance

Curf

[gilgamesh]

Hi Peeps

this might be a stupid question

i have just got a new pc with a quad gt motherboard and 320gb sata hdd, is it possible to add another 320gb hdd and convert the 2 drives to raid zero, without reinstalling vista x64.

thanks in advance

Curf

Not sure under vista but under XP no as you have to install the raid drivers at the F6 install routine

Not sure how Vista reacts to this situation.

O h almost forgot the drive would be wiped due to the information being STRIPED onto two drives instead of one.

gilgamesh

[ABIT Sean]

The information on the first hard drive would be deleted when creating the RAID array.

Hi Peeps

this might be a stupid question

i have just got a new pc with a quad gt motherboard and 320gb sata hdd, is it possible to add another 320gb hdd and convert the 2 drives to raid zero, without reinstalling vista x64.

thanks in advance

Curf

[Curfish]

Thanks for the fast reply.

i guess the only way to do it would be to image the current drive, create the raid then image back onto it.

i assume this would work?

[gilgamesh]

Thanks for the fast reply.

i guess the only way to do it would be to image the current drive, create the raid then image back onto it.

i assume this would work?

No it would not mate


The reason for which is this
the original image is not striped
how striping works
is that it uss a file and splits it into two
putting on1 part on the first drive and the 2nd half on the latter drive. Just back up your normal files, however windows will need to be re-installed again .

gilgamesh

[ABIT Sean]

Thanks for the fast reply.

i guess the only way to do it would be to image the current drive, create the raid then image back onto it.

i assume this would work?

Yes and no.

Most imaging software takes an image of the partition. When you put the image back onto the new setup it would set the previous partition.

I think the eaiest way would be to use vista back up utility, reinstall vista onto the raid array and restore you setup.

[0iD]

Thanks for the fast reply.

i guess the only way to do it would be to image the current drive, create the raid then image back onto it.

i assume this would work?

I've done it this way & it is indeed the fastest method by far. Used True Image to great effect.

[zPacKRat]

Imaging will work without issue, you may have to reactivate but that's it.

Be sure to enable raid in the bios and then install the intel raid drivers prior to imaging. this way once you've imaged the drive the drivers needed to support the raid array are there.

And basic striping is done at the hardware level, even though intel raid is software raid, there is basic functionality enabled at the southbridge, I would use the default 128k strip size too, good balance between read and write performance.

[Agent]

No it would not mate


The reason for which is this
the original image is not striped
how striping works
is that it uss a file and splits it into two
putting on1 part on the first drive and the 2nd half on the latter drive. Just back up your normal files, however windows will need to be re-installed again .

gilgamesh

Nar, it will work fine mate
The files are "split in two" when its wrote to the disk. There is nothing stopping someone from taking an image and extracting it to a RAID array. In fact, its fairly common

The only issue that might happen, is getting the backup software to see the array. As long as you can, there will be no issue