Question on Hard Drives - RAID etc.

[silencerius]

Hello, I'm thinking of purchasing a new hard drive in the near future, I already own a 120 GB ATA 133 seagate drive and I was wondering if there could be any conflicts when I buy the new HDD which will be Serial ATA. Also, is there a way to have more than 2 disks? I'm on an ASUS P4C800-E deluxe mobo which has 4 SATA controllers and 4 IDE, (3 of the last are in use).

And something else: Is there a way to "merge" 2 drives? I want to merge the second partition of my old disk with the new one and not lose any data or stability etc.

Thanks alot for your help on advance.

 

[Marine]

You can "merge" two drives -- that is not lose the data on one drive if you build a RAID1 array. But, your larger problem is that you have an IDE drive and you are adding (apparently) a Serial ATA drive. You cannot build a RAID array from disimilar controllers. Another IDE drive would work, or two SATA drives would work. Doesn't your mobo have on-board Promise "LITE" IDE array? If you have three IDE drives, you should be able to build a RAID without problem. Actually, if you have three drives already, if you add another, you can have the best of RAID, speed and redundancy.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

I believe he means 2 optical drives and 1 ata133 hard drive. (found in his sig line)