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As title states, I have a machine running Ubuntu Desktop (for now) that successfully booted. I tried to configure a 2 hardware RAID 1 arrays on 4 of the non-boot HDDs, and after applying the config in BIOS, I'm hanging on the BIOS logo screen for 20 mins with no change. This is the second time this has happened; previously this resulted in a total motherboard bricking. CPU: AMD 5600G; using the integrated graphics MB: MSI Pro B550-VC AM4 ATX Boot SSD: Samsung 970 Evo 500GB HDDs: 2x 1TB WD Blue drives, 2x 4TB WD Red Drives (connected via Sata, all showed up in the BIOS) OS: Ubuntu Desktop (just to test the config; likely moving to debian) BIOS config: enabled RAID mode, restarted, cleared the drives, applied 2 RAID 1 arrays. This has me completely stumped. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you

So I just recently bought an 1tb M.2 NVME drive, and already have a 1tb HDD in my PC. I was wondering what the best use for these would be. I was thinking of setting up RAID 1 but I read in some places online that RAID can be buggy with NVME drives. Should I do it or is it better to just have 2tb of storage. I don't really have anything important worth backing up, but I don't really need 2tb of storage either.

Hi there! I have an ASUS z170 DELUXE motherboard and today I decided to set up 2x3TB WD Blue HDDs in Raid1 mode for reliability (after my single 3TB started giving errors). The thing is, when I setup them in Raid0 (in the BIOS), the read and write performance almost doubles, but in Raid1 mode there is no difference... Am I doing something wrong here? Thanks in advance!

I had two HDDs in a RAID 1 and had a sudden power cut, after which Windows stopped detecting the partition. I checked in the BIOS, and both drives seem to be healthy, they both show up and their SMART status doesn't show any errors. When I go into the array properties however, the status is "Failed", and the array doesn't show any drives associated with it, and likewise, the drives' properties don't show any associated arrays. How do I troubleshoot this? As far as I can tell, the data might be fine, and it's only the array that got corrupted, but I couldn't find any articles about recovering from something like this, and obviously I'm afraid of trying anything on my own, I don't want to lose any data. I'd appreciate some help.

Hello! As the title of the post suggests, I am trying to add drives to an existing storage pool, but even though they are formatted and detected in Disk Management, they are not showing up in the storage pool menu as drives to add. Here are my specs: Windows 11 Pro 4 x Seagate EXOS 20 tb (2 of which were part of another storage space on a different computer; successfully detected on this new build) 2x 4 tb NVME SSD; 1x 2tb NVME SSD i9 13900k, 128 gb RAM, R9 7900xtx So here's the weird thing. Since I am migrating a storage space from my old desktop which ran Windows 10 to this new build which is running Windows 11, you'd think that there might be some sort of OS incompatibility, but one of my newly installed Seagate drives was detected and successfully added to the storage pool. I just can't add the fourth one. So, I have concluded that it is not an issue with upgrading from Windows 10 to 11. Also, all the drives are formatted as NTFS and detected in disk manager. I am having trouble detecting two of the drives. I currently have three of the 20 tb drives in a storage pool, but need to get the 4th added so I can have true parity (raid 1). I would also like to get the two 4 tb SSDs in a RAID 0, and one of them is not being detected. See the attached screenshot... You can see that there are drives not being detected by Storage Pools but they show up in Disk Management just fine! I don't know what to do, and I'm afraid I'll have to create spanned volumes in Disk Management instead of going through storage spaces, but I already have 20 tb of data on my storage space, so I'm in too deep.

Hello all, my pc buddy isn’t responding. Probably out doing stuff, oh well. Moving on.. what happened? Was using win 10 pro, had WSL kali, and Ubuntu going, both upgrading/fixing dependencies, and dist-upgrade. Had 2-3 tabs open in Firefox, one for college (blackboard), one was another for a radio station for music/background noise, and another prob related to college stuff. Word was also open so I was probably doing a virtual lab on JBLEARNING.com. So, follow instructions, do a screenshot and paste into word. As all of this was going on, hey my amd 6700xt and 6600 have a new driver available, let’s install it! So it’s installing while all this is going on, then BSOD, not sure how far into the install but I specifically remember the error code was amd*(gpu-related).dll, yada yada please wait while we report to msft and reboot for you. Pc reboots, no gpu output as expected. The ROG logo showed up (booting windows), and screen goes blank. I presume Windows loaded fine and was on the login screen, but of course couldn’t see it. fudge right? No onboard output, so wtf. what have I tried? -Reboot, then I force it to do the Windows “diagnose” BS. Go into CMD from there as the objective is clearly to remove the AMD drivers and fall back to basic display adapter. Well, diskpart shows my two nvmes when in reality the two 1tbs should be “one” physical drive as it’s raid 1. Hmm, looks like this pre-Windows boot isn’t loading the NVMe RAID drivers so C:\ isn’t accessible. Damn! Can’t even go back to a restore point! -shoved a bootable win10 usb install disk into pc and boop, fires up. Goto the part where it wants u to pick a drive to install on. Hey there’s my 2 nvmes! Then I shove in my AMD RAID usb, install the drivers, bam, there’s my partitions. Cool. Shift+F10 (I think) to get into CMD. Well fudge, the raid drive is there just not “mounted”, as in can’t access the media/file system. Shoot! -rotate my chair 90 degrees, now I’m playing off my server (2022 datacenter) off a kvm switch as it’s in the basement not the 2nd floor office. Hmm…. Ok let’s make a Windows 2 go flash drive. Fire up Rufus, make the drive, shove into pc n reboot. (Long time later) windows desktop. Ok, now we’re getting somewhere? Diskpart shows the two nvmes yet again. As expected, no access. That’s ok, I’ll just install the raid chipset drivers and the raidx utility from AMD. Reboot, wtf? Still can’t access the “drive”. -Alright so now obv we have an issue. Shutdown, insert my hiren boot “cd”, Windows PE fires up fine. Of course I can’t install the NVMe raid drivers since it’s such a lightweight version of Windows (figured I’d try). Sure enough diskpart shows the nvmes again but no access to C:\ or whatever letter it would assign if the array was functioning properly. Now I’m using some tool for data recovery to “deep scan” one of the drives. Hopefully I can just get to my desktop folder and copy my “college” folder as that’s where all my assignments and stuff are. That’s really all I care about salvaging. Probably less than 200 meg of data. It’s still scanning, drive is in good Health and it’s happy. (Still going as of now) -the weird thing i have 8x 1tb Samsung SSDs, 7 are EVO’s and 1 is a QVO - all identical firmware. Anywho, 4 of those are on raid 10 which pull up as a drive letter (I use it to store backups as for some reason the SATA raid never has a problem, even without drivers windows 2 go can see it and I can access). Also the other 4 drives are deticated hot spares (global spares?) just in case - right?? Been there before, had a SSD/HDD setup before on 10 and one drive pooped, another, then u guessed it, everything went to the trash and I swapped my config. -what I probably should have tried remember initially how windows WOULD boot but no output? Assumed it was sitting at the login screen? Well, should have tried to RDP from the server to the pc. It has a static IP of 192.168.1.19. Maybe I could have pulled up the GUI off the server and reinstalled the AMD video drivers -here is also a consideration, but I’d like solid advice on this one as again, it’s crucial data I want to recover - a whopping 200mb or less. go into bios, set to ACHI (on nvme’s), make one of two dynamic so I can *maybe* access the drive. I mean, they’re raid 1 so it’s a 100% mirror right? In theory it should work ALTHOUGH when setting up the array in the bios (NVMe, sata, don’t matter) the drives need to be unformatted Blah blah. Also, they need to be “initialized” in preparation for making the array. This leads me to beleive the bios is writing data to the drives making them say, hey I’m gonna be a member of an array, I’m special. Then ya make the array and now they’re “bound”, blood brothers I guess. So with that said, the drives must have a portion of data written saying “that other guy who matches my data signature is also me, I can’t work alone”. Of course whatever data it is, has to be stored at the very beginning of the drive in raw storage. Idk let’s say it’s only 128kb worth of code or something. U have the NVMe firmware and whatever else specific to the drive (serial number, sequence data blah blah) then that part of code associating this drive to that one, and then of course all your data - efi partition, NTFS partition, and all the other stupid ones Windows tosses in there. -so where to go from here? ideally, I’d like to break the array. I’ve contemplated simply removing one of the sticks (after disabling raid and selecting ACHI) and see if it can figure out wtf is going on. Or perhaps leaving raid on (that little part of data right?), then removing one of them. Maybe bios will see one drive is “down” and figure it out? -things to consider in bios AND windows 2 go, the NVMe raid array is “offline” - zero clue why. I didn’t mess with anything in there as of yet. Well actually no, I did clear the cmos but that still retained the raid arrays. Again, the sata array shows up totally fine, it’s online and happy, all the spares show up too. But wtf is going on with the NVMe raid?? NOTE, the cmos was not cleared until after I did the whole win2go/install raid drivers/reboot/check to see if I can access the “drive” any ideas? It be nice if I could just salvage my college folder at a bare minimum. After that, then try to recover one of the disks as a whole (so Windows can physically mount it as a letter) and remove that half-installed driver. also under disk management (computer management, whatever), the drives do pull up but for me to assign a drive letter I need to convert one of em to dynamic, from gpt. From what I’ve read online when u go dynamic u can’t convert back to gpt. Basically, I’m not quite sure if it’ll help or set me back even further. after all, it would be nice just to get windows back n working like it was yesterday prior to the BSOD. I don’t mind a fresh format either, so long as I have my college folder (finals are in like a week). -Pc specs x570 asus/rog dark hero WIFI on 4402 bios (latest last I checked, feb 02 of 2023 I beleive) 5900x OCd to 4.25 bclock set to 101.25 (could be lower now, probably just 100, not that it matters) 4x Corsair dominators, 3600, 64gb total (16g each) with docp enabled Xfx 6700ti and another xfx 6600 1000w seasonic 80 gold psu a (bleep) load of watercooling stuff. Let’s just say over 1800mm worth of radiators. Yes my case is packed! a crapload of fans, forget the brand, but non RGB. I do know they do 2500rpm, the 120mm’s at least. Same model line, 5x 140mm fans, just a tad slower but fastest fans I could find. They all match so yeah, irrelevant but good to know? 2x Kingston fury (rampage?) 1tb nvmes, latest firmware last I checked. Made in same country, same model, everything is identical about those aside from serial number 8x Samsung’s on raid10 (sata) as mentioned, no need for further details on those. They all match but one which is one of 4 global spares hardware NOT installed yet, or ever (could be helpful for anybody that has ideas) -one gigabyte NVMe pci-e 4.0 16x enclosure packed with 2x 980 pros and 2x Kingston rampages (fury’s, whatever) here’s the copy/paste off Amazon if you’d like to look it up ”GC-4XM2G4 (AORUS Gen4 AIC Adaptor, Full PCIe 4.0, Advanced Thermal Solution for PCIe 4.0 SSD)” ^again, never installed in pc, never setup, nothing. Just put the drives in the enclosure, closed it up and it’s sitting on top my case waiting to be installed after this mess is figured out. oh and should this get fixed, should I just put all 4 of my Kingston’s into that and put the two 980s on the motherboard? I plan on raid’ing the enclosure thingy - IF it has an onboard raid controller (that will eliminate the need for drivers as it’s made for my motherboard) Should it work, assuming butrificatuon isn’t a problem, put my main OS on that? How should I configure my HD’s in relation to my default boot drive? geez sorry for the long story. Still waiting on this hiren app to deep scan the drive anyway, thanks in advance. I really really need some help on this one, very very desperate OH and the server is literally a server, idk if it helps with ideas but yeah. It’s got like 10 NICs on her, U2 form factor, dual Xeon somethings, 384ish gb of ddr3, registered, ecc, blah blah. There’s also a quadro rtx 4000 in it, which I probably should have just shoved in my pc had I thought about it back then…. Full ipmi access, latest firmware. Supermicro something. So I could always do pxe boot, although I don’t quite understand how to mount a iso thru the interface as it wants a location, like \\yadayada\this.iso. I imagine it wants either \\Server\SAS-RAID\Downloads\ISOs\windows10.iso OR like linux, \\pci{03840283957302947}\somestuff\morestuff\noidea\modelnumber\sda1\Downloads\ISOs\windows10.iso ^its also raided, Intel 120gb SSD as boot, 6x 1tb sata3 SSDs on raid 0, also another array, 8x seagate somethings, 2tb each on raid 0, SAS drives plus a WD direct access storage, 14tb strictly used ONLY for backups. I mean we got a lot of terabytes here on raid 0, so B/Us are done frequently just in case For right now it’s just a storage server, static ips are set. 2022 datacenter. After college is done with it’ll become a lot more, and I’ll toss in my other 2 laptops as servers doing different roles. (That’s why I have the kvm balun, once the laptops are setup as servers they’ll be wired to the supermicro and I’ll just RDP to each of them as needed) ugh ok that’s my bit. Help!!

I used my BIOS to make a raid1 out of 2 8TB drives to use on my media server, They show up as just sdb and sdc and I don't really know what to do next first time dealing with raid of any sort. I saw some guides talking about dmraid and mdadm but its kind of confusing. Like do I just use sdb and it copies over to sbc or am I suppose to make a folder I saw something about md0 but again confusing. I am running on a intel i7 4770k if that helps.

Hello, I'm a noob with regards of disk management. I went through and installed newest BIOS (7C84v15), chipset driver and other drivers form MSI website. Because I had problems with my system stability. Upon restarting my PC I noticed that one of my drives is gone. I had 2 HDDs setup in RAID 1 array for storage and single NvMW SSD for windows. I’ve set them up it via BIOS with RAIDXpert2. Now when I go there under Array Management I can only see my boot NvME Drive (third illustration). The array is made from two 1TB Toshiba HDWD110. The drives are visible in Windows disk management tool as two separate drives with anonymus partition (Dysk 0 and Dysk 1 in picture below, they where seen as one disc before) and in BIOS system status. Is there a way to recover the array? My system: Windows 10 64b, AMD Ryzen 9 5950x, MSI mag x570 tomahawk Wi-Fi

I have a Dell Poweredge 2950 and a few SSDs of varying capacities: 2x240gb in RAID 1 (OS) 2x240gb in RAID 0 4x480gb in RAID 0 I have run into some issues when plotting. I have found that only TurboPlotter will even open in this particular case. When trying to plot, Turboplotter will work without any issue for up to 30 minutes. After that, I get an error, saying "Received ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND from Windows WriteFile API." When using TurboPlotter's checking utility on the part of the plot file that completed successfully, every section of the file comes up as yellow instead of green. On the actual server, a drive in the RAID that the plot file is on will blink in orange instead of green, which means that it thinks that something is wrong with it. It isn't always the same drive that appears as bad. After testing the supposedly faulty drive, it is completely normal. After formatting it and putting it back in, it's completely normal, until I try to plot it again. I have had this entire result happen multiple times, including on different RAIDS, and with different drives. I could try updating the RAID controller's firmware. It is most likely the original one that came with it, and the server is from 2009 or 2010. In addition to that, I could also try plotting the files externally. Let's say I plotted a drive on a normal PC. I then copied the plot file onto a USB drive. After that, I put the original drive into the server, initialized it (deletes all data from it), and I transfer the plot file from the USB drive to the original drive, inside of the new server. In this case, I would need to run each drive separately. All drives would have a virtual disk for itself, except for the OS virtual drive, which is in RAID 1 with another drive. Does this solution have a chance of working?

Per my previous post, my storage spaces pool got messed up, resulting in some very unusual behavior. I ended up backing up my data elsewhere, then re-formatting. However, I still can't restore my RAID 1. Context: I have my Windows install and boot on a 250 GB SSD (henceforth known as boot drive). Zero issues with this one. I have my games on another 250 GB SSD (henceforth known as game drive). Zero issues with this one I previously had another 500 GB SSD used for modding (henceforth known as modding drive) that somehow got stuck in the storage pool. Eventually i just backed everything up and formatted the drive I previously had two 1TB HDDs used for large file storage, configured in RAID 1. These got dis-associated, and out of the RAID. After failing to get them back-in, I backed up the data and formatted them My goal is to get the two 1TB HDDs back into a RAID 1 config Problem: Storage Spaces doesn't see the two 1TB HDDs as an option when trying to create a new storage space. I've formatted them (again), restarted the PC. They show up in disc management. Storage Spaces just straight up doesn't see them. Any advice is appreciated. Update: the advice from the comments worked. thank you!

We have a NAS full of hard drives for work. We are looking to add an SSD cache to it for faster speeds while editing. In order to do that, the enclosure only supports SSD caches for 24TB-40TB in RAID 1 configuration. Would I be able to convert/migrate the current pool from RAID 5 to RAID 1 without losing data? Or would I need to back the data up to somewhere > convert to RAID 1 > then transfer back to the NAS?

Hello, Im a hobby developer and need a fast and reliable storage for my VM (VMWare Workstaation disk) a month ago i bought a 120gb SSD intenso 3813430 for all my needs as I prefered to split it on new drive as my main SSD has lots of wear (it's 5 years old) Today that SSD looks dead, so my last backup is 1 month old because i really didn't expect it, 2-3 years yes... first week yes aswell, but a month is unlucky... bloody murphy... (i do full backups monthly) on a side note, yes I do use private git server, but not everything works with git plus sometimes im just prototyping and later deleting the git repos is a pain, so i only use git once I know it's a bigger project/project at all I'm not sure if im looking for a NAS, my router is a fritzbox 7590 and i'm not willing to change it/add a switch because of cost and space i don't have Im looking for something really cheap/diy, put in it 2x 120gb SSD intenso 3813430 (i hope warranty will replace mine) and call it a day, i would put 2 of them in my pc and use the intel raid whatever software but don't have 2 free slots nor space in the chassis Any ideas on what I can use? I wouldn't mind giving up a USB slot on pc or/and network slot on router. Again, I dont care about speed, 100-200mb/s is good enough and 120gb maybe 240gb is most this array will ever need, it has one job and one job only, store my coding VM. I prefer to code on a VM for many reasons (like isolation), easy backup and easy moving. litteraly 1 file instead of 10's of projects and 10's programs with settings and what not Best Regards, DeadlyChemist

My Build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Zabzky/saved/Vzz899 Storage config: Boot drive: Samsung Evo 980 pro Storage: (1)Samsung 870 Evo 2 TB (2)Seagate Barracuda Compute 4 TB (set in RAID 1) I setup my build with only my Samsung Evo 980 plugged in, after updating windows and all drivers I plugged in my 3 drives. booted into Bios, saw all 3 drives. booted into windows to also make sure i could see them in disk manager. I did. I then reboot to Bios and followed this link to enable RAID 1 on my 2 HDD "https://www.gigabyte.com/WebPage/818/raid-1b.html" After creating my Raid 1 Volume, rebooting to bios i noticed all drives were not seen. booted windows went to disk manager and windows still didnt see them. I think when i enable "VMD Controller" i am no longer able to see my storage drives... iv been going at this for hours. trying to update drivers again seeing if that does the trick. deleted my raid volume and resetting everything with no luck... Can someone please inform me where im messing up..

My Build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Zabzky/saved/Vzz899 Storage config: Boot drive: Samsung Evo 980 pro Storage: (1)Samsung 870 Evo 2 TB (2)Seagate Barracuda Compute 4 TB (set in RAID 1) I setup my build with only my Samsung Evo 980 plugged in, after updating windows and all drivers I plugged in my 3 drives. booted into Bios, saw all 3 drives. booted into windows to also make sure i could see them in disk manager. I did. I then reboot to Bios and followed this link to enable RAID 1 on my 2 HDD "https://www.gigabyte.com/WebPage/818/raid-1b.html" After creating my Raid 1 Volume, rebooting to bios i noticed all drives were not seen. booted windows went to disk manager and windows still didnt see them. I think when i enable "VMD Controller" i am no longer able to see my storage drives... iv been going at this for hours. trying to update drivers again seeing if that does the trick. deleted my raid volume and resetting everything with no luck... Can someone please inform me where im messing up..

So my motherboard (Gigabyte B550 Vision D) supports RAID 0, 1 and 10, and I want to make a RAID 1 setup with 2 external HDDs (4TB). I want to use it as a backup drive, and I want to use RAID 1, because if one dies, I still have the data. Can I do it in windows? If yes, can I use it for backup? If there’s a program for that, can you please say me the name?

Hello fellow Primates, First time posting on here- this is a recent project for fun more than utility. I use my PC for CAD / 3D scanning (v large datasets) more than gaming. Here are my specs: AMD ryzen 7 3800x ROG Strix x570 E-Gaming GTX 1060 2x8GB GSkill 3200 2 M.2 drives: NVME Samsung 970 EVO Boot, and some other NVME for less important programs and active project storage. PCIE USB3.2 hub I'm posting here in request for some information on using a lot of drives in general. Since my work/hobby is with very large datasets, my goal is to have my data backed up on a RAID configuration. Recently I came across a load of older drives that I wanted to leverage to do this, cuz free. After destroying 4 of them screwing around, I finally got 7 powered and in the case for configuration. I benchmarked each one to make sure it didn't have any issues. Ideally, these would be in 2 RAID configurations: RAID0 with 3x3.5" SSDs for storage of inactive data or small files. The other 4 would be RAID5 for finished / archived data. Booting with the drives installed but without any raid configuration in place, here are my experiences: Desktop and file explorer are abnormally slow *When I move files to and from the desktop, I need to 'refresh' to update the file location Random graphical errors on the desktop with sporadic brightness changes and a strange lingering effect over highlighted icons So here are my questions: How much resources does it require to have all these drives (even with no data on them)? Can the STA drives be related to the slow nature of my C drive? Am I running short on IO or PCIe lanes? Note: ALL of my mobo USB ports are being used, some with hubs.

I have 3 1TB SSD that i want to run in raid1. because of convenient reasons, and because of lack of space in my case; i stacked the 3 SSD super close together so that i can fit them in a single 3.5in bay (see attached picture). do you guys thing that this will be an issue? or will it be fine. the only issue i can think of is the middle one might overheat.

Hello, My Netgear ReadyNAS RN102 didn't get up after the Update from 6.10.4 to 6.10.5, it was just blinking (probably stuck booting) indefinitely. I had an External HDD attached for backup (which always showed green, but the data is years old (yes, I know, a backup that isn't tested isn't a backup)) I’m pretty sure that the two 2TB disks are running in Raid1. I took both Disks out and tried to look at it in Linux. I see Partitions and all looks fine, but normal mounting does not work. I can provide dumps, logs if needed. So far, I tried the USB Recovery Tool, which changed the status light and got me a working ping, but nothing more after I let it run for hours. https://kb.netgear.com/29952/How-do-I-use-the-USB-Recovery-Tool-on-my-ReadyNAS-OS-6-storage-system I have no way of seeing what the NAS is doing, except looking at a few meaningless LEDs. My next step is to try the OS reinstall Option from the boot menu and if that doesn’t work, the factory reset. If that doesn't work, I want to try to mount it with mdadm. Which sounds relatively safe? After that, my last straw would be buying a new NAS and try to just plug the drives back in or get professional help. What do you think I should to next? Do my next steps sound sensible? I would describe myself very knowledgeable with IT, but I never really worked with RAIDs, and I’m a bit scared of losing my data.

as the title says is there any point to use RAID 1 to keep my data safe or could I just copy my data to 2 drives to cut down on, if any, RAID overhead? also would it mater to to use spinning rust or solid state? majority of all files are .MP4 and I would mostly read then writing. currently I have 234GB of data to save but I will most likely add more as time goes on/

Hello, I'm a novice user first experience making a two-way mirror ironically to protect my data. Storage Spaces in Windows 10 is buggy or at least bad UI. There was 2 4TB drives in a Two-way mirror using Storage Spaces I need a bigger drive so I purchase two 12TB WD Element. I shock them into Storage Spaces, one by one and take out the two old 4TB Now looking in Windows, my drive D: is still only 4TB So is not using the full 12TB space. Nonsense I wish to change the volume from 4TB to 12TB I ask explaining the issue in Microsoft forum and turns out the volume hasn't been formatted. Or at least is missing the "Change" option as it should be shown in this pic NOW at this point, what I should do? How to disassemble Storage Spaces without losing data? I can't use the stupid "Delete" option because will delete all my info (I presume). I can't use the "Format" option because will delete as well. I do not have a second PC to take out and look at what's inside the HDD (all my memories) I can't just move (copy past) almost 4TB of data because is ridiculous and I lose info like created data. I still have my old two 4TB. In pandemic, I can't go out. Only one computer. Also two 12TB. Can I build a RAID1 to clone? How? Storage Spaces will allow that. Question How do I proceed at this point to get out? What is The best option? Disassemble and rebuild, format, or if possible creating a new pool and merge or other? How do I backup the data at this point? Do I need to use Powershell to change the volume? A novice user.

I have two (maybe three) related questions here. Even though they really would fit in two different sections (Discs and Windows), but I didn't want to split them into separate posts to not overly crowd up forums and to keep the "story" whole. So, I've got a RAID 1 "array" set up on my ASRock B450M PRO4 motherboard (its internal "RAID controller") with two Toshiba 4 TB X300 discs, which serves as a non-system disc, though quite a lot of software is on there and I have set my user libraries as located there, so the Windows installation is pretty dependent on it. What I want to do is to get a different, same-sized disc (because these Toshiba ones are just so loud), duplicate array's partition onto it in legacy mode, swap them in Windows and finally disable RAID (because the need for a driver, which's right version was actually removed from AMD's website, prevents me from using Linux, but I'm not going to get into detail on that). Actually, I did this in reverse already to get that RAID array, but I encountered some problems that I would like to avoid. For the copying part, I've had the idea to actually use the array's functionality to my advantage. I would connect the new drive to the array, reconstruct it on that drive, then reconnect the drive as a legacy device and use it like it never was a part of an array. I think that this would be the safest and most convenient option, but would it work with this controller? If that wasn't possible (because, for example, of how the "controller" works), I guess I could just copy the partition via software. Linux Live USB with GParted is usually my choice for partitioning, but I can't get the drivers, so I must use a Windows tool. Macrium Reflect is what I used last time (it's what first popped up on Google), but it for some reason didn't copy some of the data, so I'm gonna have to verify everything afterwards… Sigh… At least I've got a program for that too. There's also the fact that the discs are definitely going to slightly differ in size… But I can just shorten the partition if the new drive is too small. Now is the part scary for me - messing with Windows (the fstab file on Linux is like a kitten in comparison). I'm going to say what happened when I have done this previously. So you of course cannot assign a drive letter that is already assigned, so you need to unassign it first, but you can't reassign it right after, you must reboot Windows first. But because so many things are bound to that drive letter, Windows freaked out when it rebooted and went into a bluescreen. A lot of bluescreens. I eventually figured out which recovery mode worked and after yet more BSODs I finally reassigned the drive letter - Windows still bluescreened for a few reboots until, thank God, out of nowhere it finally started working. What to do so I don't have to go through this heart-attack-inducing headache? The only idea I have is to unassign the drive letter in the recovery mode instead of… not in the recovery mode. I could also just assign a different drive letter, but then I'd have to change every reference to the old one… No, things would probably break anyway. So maybe a Windows reinstall instead? Uh, I don't feel like configuring and installing everything again, though I am open to this possibility if the plan A happens to fail. Lastly, there's turning off the RAID array in the UEFI setup, which may seem scary too, but I assume that as long as all data is on drives listed as 'Legacy' (in other words non-RAID), everything should be fine, right? Here's a condensed recap of my questions: 1 - Does a drive taken out of a RAID 1 array (but from a built in AMD controller) function as a regular non-RAID drive, with all of its data and partitions completely usable as if it was never a part of an array? 2 - How does one properly swap a Windows drive letter to a technically different drive without too many bluescreens? 3 (?) - Is turning off RAID mode safe once I've done everything I've stated here? And here are some probably non-crucial answers to questions I feel may crop up and some clarifications: I haven't bought anything yet to first ask you for advice, because I feel like I may otherwise get more anxious than doing it this way round. What am I going to do with those discs after I take them out? - Throw them into a NAS, which I promised my family to buy to keep all of our documents and media in one place and make accessing it more convenient. They're not per se designed for NAS use, but their noise won't be as annoying in there, contrary to a computer that is right next to you, and we're no datacenter, so the discs not being optimized for a NAS probably isn't that much of a concern. What's the new disc I've chosen? - A 4 TB WD Blue, it's a downgrade in terms of performance, but WD Blues have been serving me well so far, so I trust the company. Isn't this post overwritten (like in overthought/over-engineered, not in the sense that data has been replaced)? - Yes. Sorry for the wall of text.

Hello, My pc has 2 storage drives. A 1TB WD Blue and a 500GB Seagate drive [Salvaged from a laptop]. The laptop drive is not very old and I use it as a backup of my personal family pictures and stuff (as backup of a partition of 1TB drive). I wanted a backup system which automatically updates any changes I make into the 1TB drive's partition to the 500GB drive. I've heard about servers using multiples drives in RAID to prevent loss of backup. Can I use it? And how? Please explain, I'm a totally new to this T-T Thank you!

After having a boot SSD die on me awhile ago, I replaced it with 2x SSDs so they could be set up in RAID 1. After some research, it seemed to me the easiest way to do it in Windows was to set up GPT mirrors. I followed this guide. It's worked great but now I need to move my system to a new motherboard and I cannot find any guide for this with Google. There's a lot of tutorials that explain how to set it up but nothing about moving it, especially when the mirrors are also your boot drives. I'm hoping someone here has done this before and knows if there's a special way to go about it or at least what precautions I should take. I'll buy a new Windows license if I have to, I don't care about that. My main concern is data integrity and just having it boot up as my original system. Or at least as close to that as is possible. I'd really appreciate any help or insight you guys can offer.

Hey I am looking to build a smallish array to house some virtual machines as a small homelab. I have a computer with a 12 core cpu and 128gb ram, but I am not quite sure what would be the best way to build a raid arry. I have an boot nvme ssd and two 1tb sata ssds for some fast storage, but I am going to need more space in order to really utilize all of that cpu and ram. What drives would you guys recommend for this kind of an build? SAS or Sata is fine. Yes I know that HDD's are not blazing fast compared SSD's but it does not matter to me.

Budget (including currency): n/a CAD Country: Canada Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Media server storage Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Hey everyone! I'm planning on building a new NAS for media soon, and I want to pool a bunch of storage devices together, then set them up in RAID 1. Like I'd buy four 16 TB drives, pool them into two 32 TB drives, and then RAID 1 those two 32 TB drives. My main goal is to have a single high capacity drive that is also backed up. Is this possible? And better yet, is this logical/practical? Or would there be better options for what trying to do? Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!