Questions about RAID 1

[NervousNovice]

Hi,

I'm currenlty using a SATA 80G HDD, running WinXP, and thinking about getting another identical HDD to do a RAID 1 using the controller in VIA8237 chipset. I have the following questions.

1. Must I format my old HDD?

It would be wonderful if I could just plug in the new drive, put them in RAID 1, and the new one goes mirror the old one by itself (and then they become identical afterward and I can start using them there) without formatting the old drive.

2. Specific about VIA8237 controller: The manual says that after choosing "Array Mode" > "RAID 1 for data protection" I need to choose between "Create only" and "Create and duplicate". Does anyone know what's the difference?

3. If one of those HDD in RAID 1 dies, then what should I do? Can I just unplug it and the remaining one keeps on working by itself without RAID? Or must I replace the dead drive with another one to maintain that RAID structure?

4. Continuiting from #3, if I've replaced the dead drive, then what's next? Do I need to format everything as in #1? Or will the controller help me mirroring the new drive and be ready for use again?

Please help. Thanks.

 

[KoolDrew]

1. Must I format my old HDD?

Yes

 

[BW86]

bump for ya, wondering about some of these questions myself.

 

[InlineFive]

I think that for RAID-1 it can mirror one drive to another all the time. This is how you rebuild the array if one drive fails. It's not really worth it if you had to reinstall Windows everytime, right?