ide or raid!!!!

[mattatwar]

ive got my hard drive set up in IDE but i read somewhere its better in RAID but when i change it over in BIOS windows wont start up!!! HELP!!

[CGR]

WHen you raid drives that already have data, you lose all the data on the drives..

[mattatwar]

WHen you raid drives that already have data, you lose all the data on the drives..

is raid that much better??? how do i change it over???

[CGR]

It can be better for certain things. I personally dont use it on my system, however many people do. As for how you change it, if its onboard raid then you will have options in your bios or when you boot the machine it will have an option to go into the raid controller.

[forceman]

You're talking about the BIOS setting only correct - like changing your SATA controller setting from IDE to AHCI or RAID? Bacause it sounds liek you only have a single hard drive. If so, you'll need to load the SATA drivers for your controller in Windows before switching that setting. And honestly, the performance difference probably isn't big enough to really matter.

[smokie mcpott]

cant run RAID on a single drive....

[Sarsbaby]

cant run RAID on a single drive....

Correct. And with 2 you can only run RAID 0 and 1.

0 Being 2 combined HD's to make 1 so read times sustained longer for better performance.

1 Being a HD mirrored by another HD. Like a working Backup.

You are going to need to back-up any data you don't want to lose.
You are going to need 2 Hd's that are roughly the same size. Identical is ideal.
And then you are going have to set up your RAID controller, and make 3.5" floppys of any RAID drivers you will need.
Then set-up windows, remeber to press F6 (I think) to let the setup know you need to install RAID drivers.
Follow directions from the windows setup and possibly your motherboard manual, if it's onboard, and install the right drivers for your system.
Then continue to install windows on the now "Raided" HD that you must partition and format first.
After that, you will have 1 HD roughly the combined size of the 2 HD's you installed earlier.

Does this help?