RAID!

[Dmshag]

Finally got my new computer up and running. It's a MSI Z170a Gaming M5 with a Skylake 6700K and a GTX 980Ti. I've got a 240Gb SSD boot drive and a 1Tb WD Black HDD storage drive. I want to add my old PC's 1Tb HDD to my case, firstly so that I can swap over my Steam

library, Pictures and Music. Then I want to format the old drive and set it and the new WS Black up in a RAID 1 configuration. Here's are my questions to the forum:

1- how do I go about configuring my old HDD, so that Windows recognizes it without needing to format the drive (like when installing the new WD drive under Disk Management)?

2- once the HDD is configured, and I've done the data swap to my new WD drive, how do I go about setting up RAID 1 between JUST the two HDDs, omitting my boot drive from the equation?

I know that I'll have to turn on RAID support from my UEFI, but will that negatively affect the OS and other software installation that I've already done on the new drives?

Also, will using two different types of drive negatively affect the performance of my system

Under RAID? If so, then I'll likely add the old drive, swap the data I need from it then format it and use as simply another mass storage drive.

[thenotoriousone]

6700K not 7600K. It is recommended to use the same 2 drives for RAID.

[Dmshag]

6700K not 7600K. It is recommended to use the same 2 drives for RAID.

Please excuse the typo. Big fingers, tiny iPhone keyboard. Thanks for your reply.

[thenotoriousone]

Please excuse the typo. Big fingers, tiny iPhone keyboard. Thanks for your reply.

Haha, no problem mate. You're welcome. 

[michrech]

1) If the old 1TB drive was used within Windows, you don't need to do anything other than connect it to one of the SATA ports.  If AHCI is enabled, Windows should just pick it up / assign it a drive letter.  If you don't have AHCI enabled, I suggest powering off the system before you connect the drive.

 

2) You can either use the software RAID functionality built into Windows (in Disk Management), or use the RAID capability built into your mainboard.

 

For a RAID 1, performance of your system, in general, will not be impacted.  Your system will, however, have to perform two write operations every time you store data to the array.  So long as the drives are the same size, it doesn't really matter if they're different brands (not for a small 1TB RAID1 array, anyway).

 

 

Finally got my new computer up and running. It's a MSI Z170a Gaming M5 with a Skylake 6700K and a GTX 980Ti. I've got a 240Gb SSD boot drive and a 1Tb WD Black HDD storage drive. I want to add my old PC's 1Tb HDD to my case, firstly so that I can swap over my Steam
library, Pictures and Music. Then I want to format the old drive and set it and the new WS Black up in a RAID 1 configuration. Here's are my questions to the forum:

1- how do I go about configuring my old HDD, so that Windows recognizes it without needing to format the drive (like when installing the new WD drive under Disk Management)?

2- once the HDD is configured, and I've done the data swap to my new WD drive, how do I go about setting up RAID 1 between JUST the two HDDs, omitting my boot drive from the equation?

I know that I'll have to turn on RAID support from my UEFI, but will that negatively affect the OS and other software installation that I've already done on the new drives?

Also, will using two different types of drive negatively affect the performance of my system
Under RAID? If so, then I'll likely add the old drive, swap the data I need from it then format it and use as simply another mass storage drive.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey there Dmshag,

 

Generally, it is recommended to have similar drives (speed, capacity, brand and model) in the same RAID array as differences icrease the chance of failure and drive dropouts. Moreover, the RAID controller will limit the speed of all drives in the array to the one of the slowest drive and the capacity of all drives to the one of the smallest, regardless of the RAID type. What is your old drive? 

 

Since you are transferring your old drive to this computer with a new OS, you would need to reinstall all the programs and games in order for them to work properly. you can keep the rest of the data (save files, media, etc.). It is strongly recommended that you check thoroughly the health of all the drives before reusing them to ensure the safety of your data. I would recommend using tools from the manufacturers' websites.

 

For the RAID itself, you simply go to Disk Management, delete the volumes of the drives that you want to use and configure a new Mirrored volume for RAID1 where you include the desired drives. Do have in mind that this wipes all the included drives clean from the data.

 

Captain_WD.