x58 raid1 setup

[Jasonp]

Hello everyone. I've been searching for info on this and finally decided to just ask so here it goes.

I'm setting up my evga x58 LE board with a system disk (x25-m ssd) and I also have 2 other normal hdd's (they are the same size, etc). One has data on it the other doesnt.

I want to set up the SSD as the system disk, non raid, and then run my 2 hard drives as raid 1.

questions are:
Do I set up the motherboard for AHCI or RAid right from the start?
Should I use windows 7 software mirroring or the intel raid controller for my data backup?
Will I lose my data on that hard drive setting up the raid1 or will it be ok...lol..regardless of using the intel motherboard controller or the software raid from win7?

If someone has done this or has an idea on what is going to happen here or best route let me know as I'm a little wary on losing this data on my old hard drive.

Hopefully what i'm trying to do here makes sense

Thanks,
Jay

 

[masteryoda34]

Here's what I would do.

Set your BIOS to raid mode.
Install Windows on your SSD.
Once windows is up and running, and drivers installed etc, then install the Intel Matrix Storage Console.
From the intel storage console (in Windows), you should be able to create a RAID 1 volume from the two HDD's. Make sure you read the information on the screen so that you do not wipe all the data from the disk. There should be a way to build the array using the data already existing on one of the drives.

 

[Jasonp]

Thanks for the input. I will try it that way for sure.