Spanned Volume question

blitzyuk · 21 Oct 2010 at 23:55

Is it ok to make 2 drives show up as 1 using a spanned volume in disk management?

I did try to set them up in RAID 0 but when i tried to start windows it kept crashing and would only allow me to launch startup repair.

So now i have 2 500Gb drives setup using spanned volume to make 1 931GB drive.

It doesnt matter if 1 of the drives fails as i am only going to be using this for my Steam games so if one does fail i can just get another and re-download the games.

Beerbaron · 22 Oct 2010 at 00:18

Not quite sure i understand what you have done.

When setting up RAID you will need to format the drives first, set up what RAID level you want (RAID 0 in your case) and then install windows. RAID 0 is fine for data that is not important as it has no fault tolerance. I have 3 drives in RAID 0 for windows and then have a larger disk for storage.

You wont setup RAID in disk management as this is normally done by entering the config section when you boot the pc.

blitzyuk · 22 Oct 2010 at 01:10

So if i wanted to setup RAID for 2 drives i would need to install windows?

I just wanted to use my 2 drives i have added as 1 drive i.e. instead of having 2 500GB drives show up in windows i want 1 1TB(931GB).

As it kept crashing when i started windows with the 2 drives setup in raid 0 from the bios i managed to set the both of them to show up as 1 in windows by converting them to a spanned volume in disk management in windows 7.

So not in raid 0 now just spanned volume.

Zarf · 22 Oct 2010 at 01:47

Windows doesn't support booting from a Software RAID0 of dynamic disks. This is why it was blue-screening.

you can, however set the drives up in RAID0 using your onboard motherboard RAID, plenty of guides on how to do this around but essentially you go into BIOS, change the storage controller from IDE/AHCI into RAID mode, then when you restart there will be a second BIOS screen asking for a key combo to configure. Enter the key combo and you can configure the raid arrays. This will wipe all the data on both drives.
There are ways to migrate from a single drive to a RAID0, but tbh it's probably easier to do a fresh install.

blitzyuk · 22 Oct 2010 at 03:04

Sorry i dont think i made myself clear enough.

I already have windows installed on a WD 640GB HDD. What i wanted to do was to setup 2x500GB HDD's in RAID 0 so windows shows them as 1x1TB(931GB) HDD.

After setting those 2x500GB drives up in RAID 0 in bios after restart windows got to the animated logo and blue screened then when it restarted it asked me to launch startup repair.

As i was unsure about RAID i disabled the RAID 0 on the 2 drives and proceeded to use the windows disk management instead as i had found on google that you can set unallocated hard drive space on any drive to show as 1 drive in windows.

I now have the 2x500GB HDD's setup as dynamic spanned volume drives and windows now shows them as 1x1TB(931GB) HDD.

I know it doesnt have the same functionality as RAID and that if any one drive fails then i lose all my data. This isnt a problem as it is only used for my Steam games and i can always re-download them.

rpstewart · 22 Oct 2010 at 09:27

The system will be blue screening because the SATA driver Windows has installed doesn't support RAID because RAID wasn't turned on in the BIOS when you installed Windows. When you enable RAID in the BIOS Windows doesn't know how to talk to the SATA controller any more hence it blue screens.

There's nothing really wrong with spanned volumes but you will lose the entire contents if one drive fails.

blitzyuk · 22 Oct 2010 at 15:05

Oh ok no problem like i said im all new to raid i didnt know that you have to install windows in raid to get it to work. Cheers anyway.