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General discussion

Converting basic disks to dynamic disks for RAID 1

Aug 21, 2010 12:00PM PDT

I consider myself a fairly experienced PC user but none with RAID. I'm a grad student working on my thesis, recently had my PC crash during a storm and had to reinstall everything (documents were on a separate drive).

I have reinstalled almost all of the software I need and bought extra hard drives to setup RAID 1 and a backup power supply for the most security against losing system or data. I'm using a Seagate Barracuda 80 GB for system and 250 GB for docs, and bought two extra of each. I want the best security possible against having to interrupt my thesis again or losing data before I graduate. Using Win XP SP 3.

I have been reading forums online trying to get a handle on the best way to approach setting up the RAID and also wondering if Ghosting is a good alternative (I've heard conflicting opinions on that as well). I came across info today stating that I need to convert my basic disk configuration to dynamic disk before setting up RAID. My questions:

Can I do this with the OS already installed?

Can RAID be used for both system and document drives simultaneously?

Specific steps to take would be greatly appreciated!

System details are as follows:

Operating System: Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (build 2600)
Install Language: English (United States)
System Locale: English (United States) BIOSTAR Group N61PB-M2S 6.0
Enclosure Type: Desktop Processor Main Circuit Board 2.60 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (2 total)
Not hyper-threaded Board: BIOSTAR Group N61PB-M2S 1.0
Serial Number: OEM
Bus Clock: 201 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 06/16/2008 Drives Memory Modules 330.06 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
179.52 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

SONY DVD RW DRU-V200S SCSI CdRom Device [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

ST3250410AS [Hard drive] (250.06 GB) -- drive 1, s/n 6RYC8F9W, rev 3.AAF, SMART Status: Healthy
ST380013A [Hard drive] (80.02 GB) -- drive 0, s/n 4a355256514d354a202020202020202020202020 3072 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot 'A0' has 2048 MB
Slot 'A1' has 2048 MB
Slot 'A2' is Empty
Slot 'A3' is Empty Local Drive Volumes

c: (NTFS on drive 0) 80.02 GB 63.84 GB free
e: (NTFS on drive 1) 83.89 GB 61.58 GB free
f: (NTFS on drive 1) 166.16 GB 54.09 GB free

Discussion is locked