Question about OS migration from 1 HDD to a RAID system.

[iSTRONG]

Basically, I'm quickly running out of space on my SATA WD Raptor drive and i'd like to add another similar drive to double my storage. I also would like it to be a in RAID 0.

The problem is i don't want to have to reinstall Vista. So is there a way to add the new drive and have my OS migrate from the single drive onto the 2 raided drives?

My motherboard is an Asus P5K deluxe.

[Beavis68]

Vista should have raid drivers built into the OS, it isn't like XP where you have to install the drivers during installation.

So it realloy depends on your motherboard.

See if you can download the intel Matrix Storage Manager software from the Intel website. I am not positive this will work with the Intel board but I am not sure with ASUS board.

Howevere. Setting up in RAID 0 will not increase your storage. You need two 160GB drives set to RAID0 to get 160GB of storage.

RAID0 halves your storage (as does RAID 1).

[nuclear500]

No, RAID 0 doubles your storage, RAID 1 halves it.

RAID 0 = Striping - data is stored half on one drive, half on the other, you are effectively doubling your space.
Problem? Lose one drive, lose everything.

RAID 1 - Mirroring. Second hard drive simply mirrors all write operations and aids in read operations - if its a decent RAID system, if you lose one drive, nothing happens and you keep on trucking.



To do what OP asked will require some kind of disk imaging software like Norton Ghost and then the key is making absolutely sure Vista has the RAID drivers required otherwise it'll just blue screen when it starts to boot.

[Beavis68]

yeah, you are right, I was thinking of my raid 10 set up at work, it is halved because of the mirroring.

you cant load the intel software if you dont have the drivers installed. The intel software will manage the migration, but I would back up any improtant documents.

[iSTRONG]

ty for the replies.

I'll look for the intel software. I'm not worried about my documents because they are on a seperate HDD.

Only OS + applications need to be migrated.

[_dave_]

If you want to preserve your OS installation, while using the existing drive in aprtnership with a new one in a RAID0 formation - you will need to copy it elsewhere first (USB HDD, a pile of DVDs, whatever - use Ghost or Partition Magic or such similar programs.

After creating an array, the (pair of) drives will need to be formatted.

Also, try to get an identical match to your current HDD, although I'm not sure how important that is these days.


Also - HDDs are bloddy cheap in the UK these days - I'd prob just get a new (identical) pair, create a RAID0 on them, and ghost the OS across. Then put the old HDD in a USB enclosure and use it for backup etc.

dave.