Can I do a RAID a while after doing a new system?

[Infernalz]

Building a first PC soon enough and am only going to be buying one Crutial MX100 256GB SSD to start with. What I need to know is if I can do a RAID (maybe RAID 10?) later on down the line, could be years even, or if that is something to do on a fresh build or else?

[PirateCoffee]

Probably

[Flyguygamer]

You can do it later, but it will wipe the drives so you will lose all data that is not backed up.

[roberto++]

you could but industry standard recommends to use new drives together so you can evenly wear-out each drive the same amount. Which lowering random failures and a better experience with raid.

 

 

Building a first PC soon enough and am only going to be buying one Crutial MX100 256GB SSD to start with. What I need to know is if I can do a RAID (maybe RAID 10?) later on down the line, could be years even, or if that is something to do on a fresh build or else?

[Infernalz]

You can do it later, but it will wipe the drives so you will lose all data that is not backed up.

 

So I suggest starting any Raid setup from scratch.

 

Hmm, see now my problem is that this first SSD is going to be my boot drive so wiping that wouldn't be fun at all. I do have an external 1.5TB I could save everything to if that would do anything (it already holds pictures), and then boot from that... no wait... umm.... maybe get 4 drives, RAID those together and use that as it's own drive for anything else I'd need? Probably move Steam games to those and the first SSD for files...

 

 

Man, I'm really backing my self into a corner here...

[Captain_WD]

Building a first PC soon enough and am only going to be buying one Crutial MX100 256GB SSD to start with. What I need to know is if I can do a RAID (maybe RAID 10?) later on down the line, could be years even, or if that is something to do on a fresh build or else?

 

Hey Infernalz,

 

Building a new RAID array would require a complete drive format in order to initialize it. As the guys suggested, you could do a complete backup and restore it on the already formed RAID array later on, but in these case a fresh install of the OS is always recommended to avoid any data corruption during the migration and to get rid of unwanted and unneeded software, files and updates as well as avoid transferring any potential malware or bad clusters.

Your other option is to clone this drive to another, form the RAID array and then clone back everything on the RAID array.

 

Happy Holidays!

 

Captain_WD.