RAID Setup Help

[Acoshi]

I have two hard drives in my computer right now, one is an IDE hard drive and the other is an SATA drive. And I am going to buy another SATA to replace the IDE drive. Right now there is nothing on that drive and I was wondering if I still would need to reformat my computer even though the drive I am taking out and replacing has nothing on it.

And will the data on my SATA drive (the one I currently have) be saved if I were to RAID the drives?

 

[mechBgon]

If you're going to install the OS on a RAID0 array then you'll want to back up your important data to the PATA drive, take it out of the system and set it aside, then add your second SATA drive, switch your controller to RAID mode if it's the typical one-or-the-other type, create the array, and install Windows on it. After Windows Setup is complete, put your PATA drive in again and now you have your data all right there.

It *might* be possible to make a RAID1 array without losing your OS and stuff, but I wouldn't encourage you to try it if your data's important.