Setting Up RAID 1

[Plyer]

I recently built my first PC and have used it nicely for month or so. It has an MSI mobo and a 500 GB WD Caviar Blue HD running WIN 7 64. I purchased a new identical HD, installed it and tried to set up RAID 1 per the MSI instructions, which were pretty lame for a noob like me (no instructions on how to find the RAID bios and no warning about overwriting). I ended up overwriting my primary HD with a fresh load of WIN 7 and that's it. Flummoxed (OK, pissed), I disconnected the mirror drive and proceeded to reload all programs and data (thankfully I backed up before starting the RAID set up). Then I find out from the MSI forum that I set it right and should have left the mirror drive connected so it could receive the identical programs and data. (Nothing about this in the instructions either.) Is there a way now to clone the primary drive to the mirror drive and set up RAID 1? Other suggestions welcome too.

Learning the hard way.

 

[corkyg]

It was easy for me because my RAID1 drive is for data only - not my boot drive. Be that as it may, I set up RAID1 using a PCI RAID/SATA copntroller card. It has its own BIOS. And it loads that right after the main system drive. The RAID1 (mirror) array is then built by that utility. Once it is done, if I wished to make the array my boot drive, I would clone tyhe exisiting boot drive to the array. I would use Acronis TI 2011's bootable media. It sees the array as a single lettered drive. I would clone the single drive to the array. When done, I would remove the single boot drive, and designate the array as the boot drive. I would remove the single drive, and put it away as a a backup and proceed to boot to the newly cloned array.

 

[mfenn]

Theoretically, yes it is possible to do a clone and then tell the drive that it is now a RAID1 mirror. Will the mobo FakeRAID controller let you do it? Probably not.

If you have a spare drive that is big enough, your best bet would be to do as corky says, i.e make an image of the current (non-RAID) drive, set up the RAID array, and then restore that image back to the array.