Is it possible to have a 1tb+2tb then 3tb drive raid 1 config?

[jep_miner]

So i'm very new to raid as you can probably guess from the title and thought here would be the best place to ask. so my current situation is that I have a 1tb boot drive and another 2tb drive I brought later to go with that (both are 7200rpm) so my question is if I brought this: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/highpoint-rocket-640l-lite-4-internal-port-hdd-controller raid card and a 3tb drive would it be possible to do a raid 1 with the 1 and 2tb drives mirrored onto the 3tb and if so can this be done without data loss on the 1 and 2tb drives and if this is not possible what would be the best way for me to do data redundancy without loss of my current data

 

thanks in advance 

[Mikensan]

if you mirror or stripe the drives, you will only be able to use whatever the smallest amount is available.

 

So if you stripe 1 + 2, instead of 3tb you'll only get 2tb. if you mirror the 1tb and 3tb, only 1tb will be available.

[jep_miner]

if you mirror or stripe the drives, you will only be able to use whatever the smallest amount is available.

 

So if you stripe 1 + 2, instead of 3tb you'll only get 2tb. if you mirror the 1tb and 3tb, only 1tb will be available.

yeah I forgot raid 0 has to be the same capacity, is there any way to raid 1 the 1+2 and 3 together though or do i need another 1tb, partition the 2tb into two 1tb effective drives raid 0 the 1tb's together so stripe 1 physical drive and the partition and the same again then raid 1 that setup with a 4tb drive effectively creating a raid 10.. or am I completely bonkers and raid doesn't know how to do that with partitions. this is why I need help with this, raid is so foreign to me

[michrech]

With RAID, you cannot do what you're asking.  RAID (save for JBOD) requires all the drives in the set to be of the same size.  Whatever size the smallest drive in the set happens to be, is what all drives in the set will appear to be.

 

 

yeah I forgot raid 0 has to be the same capacity, is there any way to raid 1 the 1+2 and 3 together though or do i need another 1tb, partition the 2tb into two 1tb effective drives raid 0 the 1tb's together so stripe 1 physical drive and the partition and the same again then raid 1 that setup with a 4tb drive effectively creating a raid 10.. or am I completely bonkers and raid doesn't know how to do that with partitions. this is why I need help with this, raid is so foreign to me

[michrech]

If you want a single storage pool, have a bunch of drives of different sizes, you want some redundancy, and you're using Windows, you should check out StableBit's DrivePool.  It'll let you combine your dissimilar-sized drives together into a single storage pool, and you can tell the pool to mirror specific folders to two (or more) drives in the pool.

 

Bonus -- all drives in the pool are NTFS, so if the PC hosting the pool breaks, you can move the pool to a new system, or mount individual disks onto a PC in order to recover waht was in the pool.

[bobhays]

So i'm very new to raid as you can probably guess from the title and thought here would be the best place to ask. so my current situation is that I have a 1tb boot drive and another 2tb drive I brought later to go with that (both are 7200rpm) so my question is if I brought this: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/highpoint-rocket-640l-lite-4-internal-port-hdd-controller raid card and a 3tb drive would it be possible to do a raid 1 with the 1 and 2tb drives mirrored onto the 3tb and if so can this be done without data loss on the 1 and 2tb drives and if this is not possible what would be the best way for me to do data redundancy without loss of my current data

 

thanks in advance 

YOU CAN DO IT

 

and even better is you don't have to buy the raid card.

 

i don't know if you can do it with you OS drive but you can do it with the others so if anything all you'd have to do is buy another 1tb drive (much cheaper than a raid card and more storage).

 

This only works if you're in windows. there might be alternatives for other OSes but idk them.

Go into windows and extend your 1tb drive onto the 2tb drive. This will make windows see it as a single 3tb drive. You can then raid that with the other 3tb drive. To do this you will likely have to get format your drive so you will lose the data. If you want to save the data I suggest you back it up somewhere like an external drive or on a friends computer if they have space.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey there jep_miner,

 

Generally you can put any two or more drives in a RAID array, regardless of the speeds, capacity and the types of the drives (SSHD, SSD, HDD, etc.). The RAID controller will limit all the sizes of the drives to the one of the smallest drive and all the speeds of the drives to the one of the slowest. 

You have two viable options in front of you:

- Configure a continuous backup from both drives to the 3TB drive without placing the in a RAID array. Simply partition the 3TB drive and use a backup software to make continuous backups of all the data you want from the first two drives.

- You would need to set the first two drives into a JBOD Spann mode so that your OS sees them as one big 3TB volume (this is done through the motherboard) and then you can create a Mirrored array between that volume and the 3TB drive through Disk Management. Do have in mind that doing so will format both drives as it should be done from the BIOS with the built-in RAID controller. 

 

I would suggest to do the first option as it involves less potential complications.

 

Captain_WD.

[jep_miner]

 

Hey there jep_miner,

 

Generally you can put any two or more drives in a RAID array, regardless of the speeds, capacity and the types of the drives (SSHD, SSD, HDD, etc.). The RAID controller will limit all the sizes of the drives to the one of the smallest drive and all the speeds of the drives to the one of the slowest. 

You have two viable options in front of you:

- Configure a continuous backup from both drives to the 3TB drive without placing the in a RAID array. Simply partition the 3TB drive and use a backup software to make continuous backups of all the data you want from the first two drives.

- You would need to set the first two drives into a JBOD Spann mode so that your OS sees them as one big 3TB volume (this is done through the motherboard) and then you can create a Mirrored array between that volume and the 3TB drive through Disk Management. Do have in mind that doing so will format both drives as it should be done from the BIOS with the built-in RAID controller. 

 

I would suggest to do the first option as it involves less potential complications.

 

Captain_WD.

 

so what if I backed up my data, formatted the drives so windows sees them as 3tb like you said, add the other 3tb drive and do weekly backups, is that better than doing a raid 1 array with the 3tb drive and the 2 mixed into 3tb?

edit:

or if I do your first option what's some good backup software that can do a backup from two different drives in your opinion

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Backing up the data and then restoring everything should do the trick, but having a RAID array as a part of another RAID array won't be the most stable and safe thing.

As a software I can suggest to check out WD SmartWare and see if it'll do the trick: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=41bcLt

You can also check out some comments and reviews of other software programs that people use for this purpose. 

 

Captain_WD.