setting up raid 0 after installing vista

Banzai_Joe · 1 Sep 2008 at 14:36

Hi all,

considering my pc specs (see sig), can anyone foresee any problems with me just adding another 250gb hdd and striping them for a little more performance? Vista HP x86 is already installed, but there's plenty of room on the main hdd left.

I'm really only doing this because:
a) i've never done it before on a rig of mine, and
b) i have a spare identical sata drive lying around

Any advice much appreciated.

Craig321 · 1 Sep 2008 at 14:38

When you create the RAID0 array you need to format the disks.

You'll need to reinstall

bledd · 1 Sep 2008 at 14:39

echoing what Craig said

Banzai_Joe · 1 Sep 2008 at 14:45

borls to that then!

Thanks anyway fellas

unless........can i clone the drive image onto my nas, then put it back once i've formatted the raid 0?

bledd · 1 Sep 2008 at 14:54

that sometimes works (depending on the raid controller) it worked for me on my intel raid, don't rely on it though

JayMax · 1 Sep 2008 at 19:07

Thinking back to my initial raid 0 setup I'm pretty sure that I started with one drive, installed the raid drivers in windows, imaged the drive, built the array then restored the image. Or maybe I cloned it onto a spare drive, built the array then cloned it back over. A bit vague I know (sorry) but the point is you might not need to format, just make sure the raid drivers are installed on your windows installation.

Pandobear · 2 Sep 2008 at 18:31

You can clone your drive using Acronis, or similar, then create your array and clone it back, normally requries a Windows install disk repair after cloning though

hernaldo · 2 Sep 2008 at 19:26

Craig321 said:
When you create the RAID0 array you need to format the disks.

You'll need to reinstall

Not true!!!!

You just need to create a backup of the entire drive including the MBR with a program like Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost...

Well you do need to format the drives I spose, but if you can borrow a spare for a few hours, backup to that drive, create the RAID0 array then restore the image, then do a repair on the drives with your windows install CD (making sure you have the driver for your RAID chipset at the time when asked to "press F8 to install 3rd party drivers at the start etc)...

Bit of fiddeling but I've done it before on an Sil3112, Sil3114 and an Intel ICHR type controller.