Installing RAID 1 after OS

[zakmir]

I see members have posted this question before.  I ddin't see any real solution so posting it here. 

 

I have installed Windows 2010 Home on an AMD Aorus MOBO. I have two SATA drives that I wanted to mirror. I enabled RAID on the motherboard and it sees the controllers (displays two SATA drives). These also show up as RAID drives under windows disk management but for the life of me I couldn't get it to show Mirror volume option. I also tried to create volume in the BIOS program (AMD) version F5. But in that program it shows drives are in use and ARRAY cannot be created. 

 

I contacted Gigabyte the MOBO manufacturer. Their short one line answer was that RAID must be installed before OS. So, in this scenario am I out of luck?

If Windows sees the drives and also loads the drivers then why doesn't the RAID 1 option appear. 

I have already configured this computer with apps so I figure there are two options, (1) Reinstall windows - thankfully its on a SSD. or (2) find a third party software.

Any suggestions before i reinstall windows and make a mess out of a fully functioning system?

TIA.

[Robchil]

No, they are right, Raid before OS on OS disk.. the rest can be done after. 

 

[Windows7ge]

I don't even think Storage Spaces can help you here. Do you really need a RAID1 array? Most people just back-up their data to a spare drive or to a NAS.

 

Not to mention motherboard RAID is often garbage. If you're gonna do it do it right and get a proper RAID controller. Although I don't know if TRIM/Garbage Collection still has issues with Hardware RAID or if the OS has found a solution for that.

[Robchil]

if you plan on play games on a system with raid 1 OS install disk, you will probaly experience freezes quite often in game. 

 

[Pickles von Brine]

As stated above, RAID before OS is installed on the disk. 

Is there a reason you need RAID 1? I would recommend getting some software setup to just replicate important data. A simplier method. 

RAID comes with inherent risks including RAID 1. I have had RAID 1 fail but not actually report as a failure, then when one of the drives did go the mirroring was off by over a year. At least with software you can get logs for what is synced. 

[ObsidianAura]

If you created a backup image of your OS  saved to another drive. Then wiped your other disks and made your RAID 1 array, you could then restore back to the array, that could work.

 

But as others say backing up to a NAS is probably a better thing to do, or you could sign up to backblaze or something?