Add matching size drive to create RAID 1 - Reformat or just pop it in and turn it on?

[steaksauce111]

Hi Guys,

I've never used RAID before, surprisingly. I've been reading up on it but I've been reading different answers from everyone so I just wanted to confirm here. Some say that I should reformat the current working drive containing the OS, pop in the second drive, turn on RAID in the BIOS, then re-install Windows. Some others say that I can just go into Windows Disk Manager and it will just start the RAID 1 and mirror the first drive in the second. Which is it?

Gigabyte Motherboard
e8400
250GB SSD + 250GB SSD
Windows 7 64-bit

Also, if I want to stop RAID and take out the second drive, do I need to switch something off before taking out the second drive or will it just notice that there is no second drive and automatically work on restart on just one drive?

TIA

 

[h9826790]

I am not a Windows user, but did use RAID 1. The whole idea of RAID 1 is to keep the system alive (not really for backup purpose). So, in case you remove one of the drive (or a drive fail), the system will keep running run on the remaining drive. No crash, no restart.

 

[greenhawk]

Some say that I should reformat the current working drive containing the OS, pop in the second drive, turn on RAID in the BIOS, then re-install Windows.

Some others say that I can just go into Windows Disk Manager and it will just start the RAID 1 and mirror the first drive in the second.

Also, if I want to stop RAID and take out the second drive, do I need to switch something off before taking out the second drive or will it just notice that there is no second drive and automatically work on restart on just one drive?

Doing the first is generally the best as you ensure the raid will work (have to load extra drivers on windows install). It is also more likely to work if a drive stops working or is pulled out, especially in a system with multiple drives in it.

The second can work under some conditions as the raid is then done in windows. The down side is that it generally only works for drives where windows is not installed / is not the boot drive of the system (depending on the version of windows as earlier versions only allows raid 1 on boot drives for servers only, not home users). It also requires that the original drive was setup as a dynamic drive, which given the small size, would not have happened if you installed windows with the default settings. Assuming this all works, there is still the chance you would copy the empty drive onto the one with data, so while the raid was setup, it would have resulted in you loosing all your data anyway.

As to your last part, it might work with only one drive, but then it might stop you from starting the computer as it would have detected a fault condition (missing drive) and wait until it is fixed before allowing itself to be turned on / load windows. This is generally done as a safety feature so the operator knows about the problem as soon as possible.

If you are looking at just wanting a back up of the OS drive, there are far better ways to go about it. Removing drives from raid arrays is generally not a good thing to be doing regularly and especially not when in use.