Another RAID 1 Question

[Mines_Skyline]

Hey guys,

My case is very similar to this one: http://linustechtips.com/main/forum/storage-solutions/116786-raid-1-questions

The difference is I would like to create a RAID 1 array for 2 Solid State Drives with the operating system on it.

Here are the relevant specs:

Motherboard: Rampage IV Extreme

Drives: 2x Corsair Force 3 120GB

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Currently, I only have 1 drive and it just failed. I will be shipping my drive back to Corsair soon for RMA and hopefully get a functioning drive from them in a few days. I did not have any backup of it, and I am not sure if I need any as all my important data is on my mechanical storage drive and the cloud. However, right now I am without a desktop computer as the OS was on that drive. This is where RAID 1 comes in.

Here are my questions:

1. Since I cannot find the same drive for sale anymore, will my RAID array work if I purchase another 120GB SSD? Perhaps another Corsair 120GB drive. The manual says the size of the RAID array will be the size of the smallest drive which implies different sizes are allowed. But it does not specify if it has to be by the same manufacturer or the same speed.

2. Once my array is functional, say one of the drives fails again. This time, I have a second drive with the exact same data. So can I simply “turn off†RAID from my BIOS and boot Windows from my functioning drive while my failed drive is out for RMA?

3. The motherboard manual talks about creating a “RAID driver disk†for use while INSTALLING Windows in a RAID set up. But what if I want to install Windows on one drive first and get everything running, THEN pop in the second drive in and initiate RAID from there? Will it work or do I have to have the RAID working before OS is installed?

Please let me know if you need any more information. I look forward to your help.

[Whaler_99]

1 - You can mix SSD and mechanical, as long as their are SATA or different manufactuers, different sizes, etc. All the raid will care about is another disk, on the SATA channel, that is at least as big as the drive already there. So you could mix and match speeds, sizes and manufacturers, etc. Just the RAID array will be the size of the smallest drive and run at the speed of the slowest.

2 - basically boot into BIOS, turn it from RAID to IDE and you should be able to boot into Windows. But, with a RAID 1 array and a failed drive, system should still be able to boot into windows, juts be in a degraded state.

3 - Yes, just make sure the BIOS is in RAID mode, install windows. Then, install the RAID management software in Windows. Most mobos on intel chipset, this is Intel Matrix or Storage manage. Add second drive to system. Load into management software, create new array. PAY Attention, when creating it that it use the porper source drive, the initial one, to copy the data from. Everything should be fine.

[Mines_Skyline]

Okay I understand. Thank you for your help. I will see what I can do with this.

[AidanJMessenger]

Hey that's my thread! Haha I, glad I found this actually as it answered some of my questions more clearly :) and I learnt that you can mix drive sizes. Sweet! I was worried about that :)