About to setup RAID, quick question

[Tumnus]

I decided that I'd go ahead and give RAID a go, and decide for myself whether or not I think it warrants usage. However, I already have two drives setup in a non-RAID setup; I know I'm going to have to reinstall Windows to install the RAID drivers, but I was just going to reinstall Win2k on the same partition that WinXP is currently on. My question is will setting up RAID require I format all data on both of my drives? I have certain files that I'd like to keep, which normally wouldn't be a problem, but it did just occur to me that since RAID is striping data across both disks that it might need two totally clean disks. :bang head

[Snugglebear]

A stripeset will obliterate the data, yes (RAID 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 50, 10, 0+1). With mirroring (RAID 1), however, it depends on the type of controller, as some will allow you to mirror pre-existing data without blowing it away. Some of the really high-end controllers will allow you to do RAID level migrations or array size adjustments while preserving data, though neither support nor success is guaranteed.

[Tumnus]

Well darn? I suppose this'll take a little while longer than I'd hoped for. :shrug: Thanks for the quick reply.