Raid and non raid drives in same computer

[JonSimonzi]

So I'm installing windows right now on a Rai0 on the 2x WD 500gb Black drives I recieved from cw823, and I thought of a question I should have asked prior :( My plan was install windows on a partition on the raid, then plug in my old 320gb WD an copy everything over. Can I have those 2x drives in RAID0 and one drive not in a raid on the same computer? Only reason that even popped into my head, is when I was setting it up and you have to go into bios and choose "Configure SATA as RAID", changing it from "Configure SATA as IDE". So please tell me I'm not screwed, and after windows is installed and all drives are updated, I can plug in my old hard drive and get all my info off of it. Thanks.

[ou_phidelt]

I haven't done it myself but if I remember correctly the Intel Storage Manager can handle that. I believe it is CTR-I at boot.

[JonSimonzi]

Yeah, it is Ctrl + I at startup to enter the storage configuration. I'll check in there if it doesn't pick it up automatically.

[tuskenraider]

With SATA mode set to RAID, any unused drives for your arrays will been seen as singles in your OS. You may have to initialize them in Disk Management to see them.

[fritzman]

Yeah... what tuskenraider said... no problems at all.

[Particle]

It should work fine. That setting in your BIOS just toggles how the SATA controller operates. When set as IDE it's just a generic "find all drives connected and treat them as generic ATAPI/IDE devices" mode. When you set it to RAID mode, an actual RAID BIOS is ran during startup that will let you configure arrays (or not if you choose).

[JonSimonzi]

Thanks guys, got it figured out. Transfering 250gb worth of crap now :)

[rshattuck]

Thanks guys, got it figured out. Transfering 250gb worth of crap now :)

Hi I am in a similar situation and cannot solve it. I cloned my working setup over to a 500gb hard drive and bought 2 1.5tb drives to set up as Raid 0. Now I cannot get Windows to install on the Raid. My idea was the same as yours - I wanted to set up the raid and transfer everything back over to it but I gave up and decided to do a clean install. If there is a way to get my 500 gb transfered over I would be extremely happy. The problem though is that I used Acronis - I first cloned about 200gb over. When I try to go in and recover through a rescue cd I am told that I only have one drive. So I decided to create a rescue image - thinking maybe I could recover the rescue image back over but that didn't work either. If you know how I can just transfer back over my setup I would be extremely happy. When I try to clean install it tells me

[Kayden]

Are you booting to the Acronis recovery media? Some versions of Acronis are horrible at detecting raids in recovery boot.

Try it in Windows. You can load Acronis images and restore just the files inside where ever you want.

Oh wait... are you loading the drivers for your raid card during the install? (Even if Acronis sees your array and you image it, it wont work as the OS doesn't have drivers for your raid.)

What does the install tell you?


On a side note... you have 1.5TB drives in a raid 0? That's ~3TB(more like 2.7TB). MBR can only handle 2TB partitions. Did you set it up in multiple partitions?

Hi I am in a similar situation and cannot solve it. I cloned my working setup over to a 500gb hard drive and bought 2 1.5tb drives to set up as Raid 0. Now I cannot get Windows to install on the Raid. My idea was the same as yours - I wanted to set up the raid and transfer everything back over to it but I gave up and decided to do a clean install. If there is a way to get my 500 gb transfered over I would be extremely happy. The problem though is that I used Acronis - I first cloned about 200gb over. When I try to go in and recover through a rescue cd I am told that I only have one drive. So I decided to create a rescue image - thinking maybe I could recover the rescue image back over but that didn't work either. If you know how I can just transfer back over my setup I would be extremely happy. When I try to clean install it tells me

[tuskenraider]

The problem though is that I used Acronis - I first cloned about 200gb over. When I try to go in and recover through a rescue cd I am told that I only have one drive. So I decided to create a rescue image - thinking maybe I could recover the rescue image back over but that didn't work either. If you know how I can just transfer back over my setup I would be extremely happy. When I try to clean install it tells me I know I have to use Acronis installed on a BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/)Windows boot disk with the RAID drivers installed as well to get Acronis to work. It will not work with RAID with the recovery disk you can make within Acronis, at least in all my experiences. I should note this is with v.10 not 11, which they may have included more RAID drivers to cover this, but 11 never recognized my USB mouse or keyboard.........which is pretty pathetic.

[Kayden]

I can top that. I have two raids set up on the same two drives. Acronis can see the first one, but not the second. I contacted tech support and they gave me a version with more drivers that "will surely resolve the issue". When I ran that version it saw both disks as one large unpartitioned disk.
Go them!

I know I have to use Acronis installed on a BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/)Windows boot disk with the RAID drivers installed as well to get Acronis to work. It will not work with RAID with the recovery disk you can make within Acronis, at least in all my experiences. I should note this is with v.10 not 11, which they may have included more RAID drivers to cover this, but 11 never recognized my USB mouse or keyboard.........which is pretty pathetic.