RAID 1 and partitioning

[DBissett]

I'm about to build a RAID1 config with 2 WD 640aaks hd's and have never done a RAID config before. I want to partition "disk1" with 2-3 partitions and I'm assuming that "disk2" should be partitioned exactly the same way....and the RAID1 operation will map everything on disk1 to disk2 correctly. Right?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

The operating system will see the raid array as one volume, so it will partition just the same as a single drive.

 

[DBissett]

THanks for the reply, but having not done a RAID array before I'm not sure what it means. I'm unclear about when the partitioning gets done, i.e. when RAID is setup, OS is installed and partitioning is done. If Windows will see the RAID array as a single volume that sounds like the array is defined before Win is installed....THEN I partition the HD? If I setup Partition 1 for the OS, partion 2 for programs/data, etc., and WIN sees both HD's as one volume, how will it partition HD2? Thanks.

 

[MerlinRML]

Hardware and semi-hardware RAID arrays are handled outside of the user space of your OS. So your OS will see the already created RAID array, not 2 independent disks. You know that a RAID 1 array is really 2 individual disks that have the exact same data, but your OS only sees the RAID 1 array and has no knowledge of the actual hard drives that make it.

For example, you have 2 WD640 drives. You create the RAID 1 array through the RAID BIOS and create a 640GB RAID 1 array. Windows sees the RAID 1 array and calls it a hard drive at 640GB. Anything you do to on that drive will automatically be handled in the appropriate manner (i.e. replicated to both hard drives in the case of RAID 1).

So you don't need to worry about doing anything to drive 1 and drive 2. Your OS should only see array 1.

 

[DBissett]

Great, I think I finally get it....after defining the RAID1 array I don't do ANYTHING to "disk2" because anything I do to disk1 is also done to disk2. I guess this means that "disk2" gets partitioned the same way is disk1.