So I've got a now aging Asus K8V with an integrated Promise RAID controller to which I have attached, aside from a few PATA drives, an SATA 200GB drive. I have long had that single SATA drive running alone on one of the two RAID controllers on the K8V and have used it frequently. I today purchased an additional SATA 250GB drive in the hopes that I would be able to transfer data off a couple of my older PATA drives and ditch them (having originally had an absurd 6 HDs in the system) , while keeping the old 200GB SATA and new 250GB SATA along with my IDE boot drive. Whether these SATA drives were to be united as a single RAID drive in the end or not was effectively irrelevant to me, as long as I retained my old data from the 200GB.
So the problem is this: I cannot figure out how to get the new drive up
and running while retaining all the data currently existing on my prior
200GB SATA. I'm fairly certain that when I originally set up the 200GB drive, I set it up in the VIA RAID BIOS as a single drive array (or perhaps incomplete array), which was fine, and worked at the time and has for the last year and a half.
In attempting to retain the data from that drive and add the new one, however, I found myself absolutely unable to unearth any such possibility this time around for the new drive. The RAID BIOS will allow me to span data across the drives, mirror the data, or stripe it, but no options exist for using the drives independently (either by creating two incomplete arrays or any other means). But booting with either single drive attached alone results in the RAID BIOS providing no available options save to exit, and booting with both drives attached allows no option for configuring them independently.
In response to this, I attempted to span data across the two drives while retaining the data from the original drive (the VIA RAID BIOS asked if I wanted to retain the original data in the new array, which was reassuring, as I did). I was able to create this array, but upon entering Windows, it became apparent (somewhat predictably, I'll grant) that Windows did not recognise the new array as partitioned or formatted, so this does me no good as far as retaining my old data goes.
So I'm worse than when I started at present, unable to access the data on the 200GB drive which this morning was functioning by itself and recognised by the RAID BIOS, and unable to add the new drive to my system without doing something I know will destroy my data (i.e., creating a new array then partitioning and formatting it).
Any advice on what I can do?
So the problem is this: I cannot figure out how to get the new drive up
and running while retaining all the data currently existing on my prior
200GB SATA. I'm fairly certain that when I originally set up the 200GB drive, I set it up in the VIA RAID BIOS as a single drive array (or perhaps incomplete array), which was fine, and worked at the time and has for the last year and a half.
In attempting to retain the data from that drive and add the new one, however, I found myself absolutely unable to unearth any such possibility this time around for the new drive. The RAID BIOS will allow me to span data across the drives, mirror the data, or stripe it, but no options exist for using the drives independently (either by creating two incomplete arrays or any other means). But booting with either single drive attached alone results in the RAID BIOS providing no available options save to exit, and booting with both drives attached allows no option for configuring them independently.
In response to this, I attempted to span data across the two drives while retaining the data from the original drive (the VIA RAID BIOS asked if I wanted to retain the original data in the new array, which was reassuring, as I did). I was able to create this array, but upon entering Windows, it became apparent (somewhat predictably, I'll grant) that Windows did not recognise the new array as partitioned or formatted, so this does me no good as far as retaining my old data goes.
So I'm worse than when I started at present, unable to access the data on the 200GB drive which this morning was functioning by itself and recognised by the RAID BIOS, and unable to add the new drive to my system without doing something I know will destroy my data (i.e., creating a new array then partitioning and formatting it).
Any advice on what I can do?