Adding Raid 1 to a disk that already contains data?

[Cris.py]

Hello,

 

I've had some issues with my data drive (2 TB HDD) and it got me thinking: I have no real protection for drive failure.

 

So, the question is: how would I go about adding a drive, making it Raid 1? Do I just add drives in Raid and it will automatically copy current data to new disk? Will it format the disk? How would I do this?

 

I have MSI A-pro B550 motherboard and would just use the built in SATA raid controller. Also, fyi I don't know much about raid (never done it before).

[Levent]

Both drives have to be formatted when you put them in raid, so no that wouldn’t work. Copy the data to another disk, convert your SATA MODE to RAID and when you restart you should be able to get into a disk management interface of sorts, there you can put

your disks into raid1. Once you booted to your operating system you will have to create a new partition.

[Kilrah]

Note that RAID1 will only protect you against outright failure of a drive, which is a pretty poor level of protection compared to an actual separate backup.

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Both drives would need to be formatted during the creation of the RAID array.

 

I'd recommend using the drive as a backup (not just copying data across to it, use an actual backup software, even the built in Windows backup is fine). I'd advise putting it in an external caddy (or just buying an external drive) and then backup to it frequently. RAID protects only against a drive failure, while an actual backup protects against much more.

[Cris.py]

58 minutes ago, Levent said:

Both drives have to be formatted when you put them in raid, so no that wouldn’t work. Copy the data to another disk, convert your SATA MODE to RAID and when you restart you should be able to get into a disk management interface of sorts, there you can put

your disks into raid1. Once you booted to your operating system you will have to create a new partition.

Ok got it, I guess I'll get an external disk and duplicate all data there then configure raid and duplicate back. Should be doable. Thank you for info!

[Cris.py]

24 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

... RAID protects only against a drive failure, while an actual backup protects against much more.

41 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Note that RAID1 will only protect you against outright failure of a drive, which is a pretty poor level of protection compared to an actual separate backup.

 

Thank you both but I am aiming specifically at disk failure. All my critical data is backed-up, but I still don't want to go through the hassle of a dead drive cause all non-critical data will take ages to reacquire. Thank you nontheless.

[Kilrah]

9 minutes ago, Cris.py said:

Thank you both but I am aiming specifically at disk failure. All my critical data is backed-up, but I still don't want to go through the hassle of a dead drive cause all non-critical data will take ages to reacquire

Would still use that 2nd drive as a backup instead of RAID.

If e.g. your filesystem gets corrupted RAID won't help you, a separate backup will.

[Oshino Shinobu]

3 hours ago, Cris.py said:

Thank you both but I am aiming specifically at disk failure. All my critical data is backed-up, but I still don't want to go through the hassle of a dead drive cause all non-critical data will take ages to reacquire. Thank you nontheless.

Then use the drive to backup your non-critical data as well? If you're worried about the hassle of a dead drive leading to having to re-aquire non-backed up data then it makes sense to use another drive as a full backup to protect against drive failure and data corruption, ransomware etc.

 

RAID is really for high availability, where if a drive dies the system doesn't go down. For anything other than server systems, it really doesn't make much sense. But either way, the answer to the original question is still that for RAID 1 both drives would be wiped when the array was created.