Moving from single SATA drive to 2 SATA drives in RAID mirror setup?

Question

Hi all,

I've currently got a Seagate ST380817AS 80GB SATA hard disk in one of my machines, which is starting to seem a bit noiser than it used to, so I've just bought another unit exactly the same with a view to RAID'ing them together in a mirror setup so that should the original disk fail, all will not be lost :).

My question is this: I'm assuming it's not enough to just plug both drives into my motherboard's RAID controller (my board is a Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe) with one disk full of data and one empty - is there any procedure I should go through before connecting them? I have never used a RAID setup before so this is all new to me. It just seems a little high in expectation to hope that I could connect both disks and have the controller realise that one needed to be mirrored to the other. Do I have to back up the original drive, wipe them both, then connect them "fresh", or anything like that?

Any light that can be shed on this would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks for reading!

Answer 1

click the link and knock yourself out!

Answer 2

i become interior a similar problem truly over a 12 months contained in the previous. My Lenovo technique had each and each SATA and IDE ports internally although when I linked the IDE rigidity, the technique does no longer boot. i attempted on each and each the extra IDE controller and ecosystem it on the CD/DVD controller (which in my case continues to be an IDE skill). I went via the BIOS settings, known jumpers, regarded on the Lenovo forums and not in any respect utilising a fulfillment. What i ended up having to do become make certain on up an IDE to USB adapter (a twin of the single proper from NewEgg, although I merely went to a close-by pc save and that they had one for on the challenge of a similar fee). I transferred all the documents i wanted off and that i now use that force as a backup gadget, periodically copying over portraits, music, and one yet another prevalent files.

Answer 3

You need to become familiar with your RAID BIOS.

In most cases you should keep track of te Serial Number of each drive so that you can tell which is the full drive and which is empty.

Also know in advance which is connected to each SATA connector ( 1 or 2 )

I would read the BIOS manual or download it from ASUS and also check their forums.

I hope this helps !

Answer 4

you should go into the bios and configure the raid controller to mirror it should select the primary hdd to be the drive to copy from and the secondary to copy to. I would back up my data just to make sure. good luck