raid question?

I understand that when setting up raid any thing on the second drive is lost. this isn't going to be a problem as my second drive will be empty.

My question is concerning the first drive and the partitions and the info thats on them. is the first drive safe, to an extent?

I have about 30 gigs of mp3's that I riped from my own cd's, and I don't feel like ripping them all again. not a big deal if I do have to though. the other stuff on my drive is easy to back up. and I plan to do a clean install of windows anyway.

I'm running an EP-8K7A+ with Hipoint 370 controller.

Well the DATA on the 1st drive will be erased as well. It's a pain but since you have the original CDs anyway all you lose is time.

I kinda thought it would be earased as well but anything I saw only hinted to the data on the second drive. I still had to rip halve of cd's any way.

back up your mp3s on a second hd. that's what I do, I use a 20gig laptop drive.

Maybe this could be your perfect excuse to buy a CDRW?
It is great to be able to back things up.

If I had acces to another hard drive I would do that, as it would be a lot quicker than ripping them again. but I own all the cd's so all I loose is the time it takes to rip them. but it's still a pain. I have enough rws to put all my other data onto.

edit for 320 kbps
30 GB of mp3 at 320 kbps wont compress mutch to make it worth buying that many rw's for cd I allready own.

YGPM on your hd predicament. <-- EDIT

*I saw the 30gigs all I have is a 10 gig.

If I decide to put my casset tapes onto my hard drive about 220 of them I'll definately put them them onto cd.