How to set up a RAID?

[alanschu]

I recently bought a new computer, and it just sort of occurred to me that I have two 250 GB SATA hard drives.

 

I'm thinking maybe I would like to put them into RAID 0, but I've never actually set up a RAID before.

 

I'm 99.9% my motherboard has an on-board RAID controller as well.

 

 

 

Before I get too far ahead of myself though, I do have some questions.

 

First, I imagine that I'll need to wipe content on my current install if I want to do this...correct? Data deletion isn't that big of a deal, but if I could set it up without wiping a drive that would be cool....though I suppose it wouldn't really make much sense.

 

Second, I currently have a 30 GB partition on my main drive, which basically holds just Windows. It's a holdover habit from my old school Win9x days of reformatting my HD and reinstalling windows periodically. Would it be possible to make a RAID of the remaining 220 GB? This would work out kind of nice, as I could still have a 30 GB partition for Linux (work related stuff).

 

 

Thanks.

[LostStraw]

When I set up my raid array I had to format both drives, couldn't leave anything behind. Though, it might depend your motherboard and what it will let you do.

 

I have a seperate raid card for my array, I get into the raid controller settings by pressing a key (can't remember off the top of my head) a little while into the boot sequence. I figure with the raid on the motherboard you'll probably do it directly from the bios. The manual (if you have one) is usually helpful .

Edited June 19, 2006 by LostStraw

[Gorth]

I actually got an old 60gb disk as my boot/windows disk, runs as a non raid drive. For work/fun, I got a RAID 0 set with two 120gb IDE drives and a RAID 0 set with with two 120gb SATA drives. All onboard controllers. And yes, I needed to format the combined drives for the purpose of using them as a RAID

[alanschu]

It makes sense that you would have to reformat the drive.

[Bokishi]

Obviously.