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Can I change RAID mode without losing everything?

Stratman

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Asus A7V600-X motherboard, 2x160GB SATA drives in 'JBOD' RAID

The disks appear as just one big C drive which is mostly empty. I suppose I was being greedy when I chose RAID SPAN for capacity. :o

Can I enter the RAID setup and change the mode to RAID 1 for data protection without the system wiping the contents?

I am loath to try it in case it doesn't give the "Are you sure?" prompts and just assumes I know what I am doing (always a risky assumption) and re-formatting the whole kit and caboodle :eek:

If the answer is "No you can't, changeing the RAID setup will wipe the drives" is there a third-party RAID manager that will do what I want?
 
Stratman said:
Asus A7V600-X motherboard, 2x160GB SATA drives in 'JBOD' RAID

The disks appear as just one big C drive which is mostly empty. I suppose I was being greedy when I chose RAID SPAN for capacity. :o

Can I enter the RAID setup and change the mode to RAID 1 for data protection without the system wiping the contents?

I am loath to try it in case it doesn't give the "Are you sure?" prompts and just assumes I know what I am doing (always a risky assumption) and re-formatting the whole kit and caboodle :eek:

If the answer is "No you can't, changeing the RAID setup will wipe the drives" is there a third-party RAID manager that will do what I want?


I dont know about this particular motherboard, but you usually CANNOT change the raid type on the fly! Best way is to backup the data, change the raid and restore unfortunately!
 
JBOD is not raid, it means "just a bunch of disks", so you should be able to see 2 disks..

If your disks are striped, you will see one 320Gb disk and you cant change to mirrored.

If its just a 160gb disk, then you should be able to mirror it.

Craig
 
Either way when it's in Raid 1 (span) it's a blat and re install!!
Raid 0 much nicer, one disk dies, the other has the data. NOTE I said data, cos twice crap is still crap, so if your OS is nailed, it will be on the other drive too.

BUT Raid 0 can make a startling difference to loading files, takes a tad longer to save them, but you would not notice.

Paul.
 
drifting said:
Either way when it's in Raid 1 (span) it's a blat and re install!!
Raid 0 much nicer, one disk dies, the other has the data. NOTE I said data, cos twice crap is still crap, so if your OS is nailed, it will be on the other drive too.

BUT Raid 0 can make a startling difference to loading files, takes a tad longer to save them, but you would not notice.

Paul.

I think the 0 and 1 are the other way around. 0 is span and 1 is mirrored AFAIK
 
frog1520 said:
I think the 0 and 1 are the other way around. 0 is span and 1 is mirrored AFAIK

To be honest I always get them the wrong way round? I thought I got it right this time :)

Ok go for Raid 5 with a Hotspare, I use them all the time :)

Paul.
 
Thanks for confirming my suspicions. The two physical 160GB disks appear as just one big 320GB drive to the OS, so it's definitely striped.

Bummer. Still, come the next megacrash I know what to do.
 
frog1520 said:
I dont know about this particular motherboard, but you usually CANNOT change the raid type on the fly! Best way is to backup the data, change the raid and restore unfortunately!

I recently bought and installed an Intel 8 port PCI-X-133 8-port raid card with SATA-II functions (inhale).

It has on-the-fly migration of raid from 1 or 0 to 5. It can be done by adding more drives and it would only make sense if the drives were the same brand and capacity (to do with the timing signals and keeping response times to a median).

Given that there are 1million hour drives out now then I tend to think that at the very least, regardless of the raid setup that the drives need to be the right kind.

You can also have a RAID 10 which is a mirrored 0.
 

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