Advice on how to rebuild my pc?

bass_junkie83

bass_junkie83

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Could someone please give me some advice on how to do this please? It's a job I have planned for tomorrow, and not entirely sure how.

First, a bit of background. My pc uses a SSD for the windows 7 installation, and another two 1TB drives for other software and general storage.
My SSD is kaputt and I have a new one arriving tomorrow to replace it,

This is what I assume I will need to do.

1. Install the new SSD into the machine and install windows. (should be easy)
2. Of the two 1TB drives, back up one to another backup drive.
3. Wipe both drives and install into the pc and set up RAID.
4. Copy original data from the backup back to the RAID hard drives.

Is that about right? If so, the only thing I am not sure on is how to set up RAID.
 
I would just put the 1Tb drives in, as is.

Wouldn't bother about RAID and just use synctoy to back up these drives and any external drives you have.
 
As tempting as it would be to double my storage capacity like that, it does take my backup down to just one level.
 
What do you want the two drives RAID'ed for? If you want RAID1 (copy of data) you can just add the second drive to the first within Windows without losing any data.

As Neil will bleat on and on about ;) :D RAID isn't a backup....
 
arad85 said:
What do you want the two drives RAID'ed for? If you want RAID1 (copy of data) you can just add the second drive to the first within Windows without losing any data.

As Neil will bleat on and on about ;) :D RAID isn't a backup....
Click to expand...

No it's not a true backup. But it is some extra redundancy in the event that a drive dies between backups.

So are you saying I can leave the drives as they are with all existing data still on them. Hook them up and adding the second drive to the first will put me back to where I started?
 
bass_junkie83 said:
So are you saying I can leave the drives as they are with all existing data still on them. Hook them up and adding the second drive to the first will put me back to where I started?
Click to expand...
I have no idea where you started....

If you have 1 drive with data on and a second that is blank., you can add the second to the first as a mirror in computer management...
 
I started off with the two drives in RAID 1, so I have two drives with identical data on them ready to go back in.
 
bass_junkie83 said:
I started off with the two drives in RAID 1, so I have two drives with identical data on them ready to go back in.
Click to expand...

So they should just go back in as is... or am I missing something
 
Pretty much all done now and it's running sweet off the new SSD, very happy!

I have put the two hard drives back in and they were not showing up. So I found them in disk managements and had to 'import foreign disks' for them to be usable.

They now show up as one drive in disk manager, but two separate drives in 'my computer'.

Untitled.png


Untitled1.png


So I am not sure if they are working correctly in RAID, but showing both drives, in which case how do I get it to show as just one.
Or they are only recognised as two separate drives now, in which case I need to set up the RAID doochap again. Erm, how? :shrug:
 
bass_junkie83 said:
So I am not sure if they are working correctly in RAID, but showing both drives, in which case how do I get it to show as just one.
Or they are only recognised as two separate drives now, in which case I need to set up the RAID doochap again. Erm, how? :shrug:
Click to expand...
Right click on E... There should be an option of: Add Mirror...

You may need to initialise F: for the PC to enable though
 
How were the raid drives set up previously? On the motherboard bios/util? Windows?

I'd forget the mirroring however you do it, software raid in windows is as much use as a chocolate teapot. Use a sync util.
 
arad85 said:
Right click on E... There should be an option of: Add Mirror...

You may need to initialise F: for the PC to enable though
Click to expand...
There is no option for for adding a mirror when I right click E. With the F drive, the only option not grayed out when I right click is 'delete volume'.

neil_g said:
How were the raid drives set up previously? On the motherboard bios/util? Windows?

I'd forget the mirroring however you do it, software raid in windows is as much use as a chocolate teapot. Use a sync util.
Click to expand...
Honestly, I don't know. It wasn't done by me an I am already just outside my normal comfort zone. :Lol:
So would I be better to reformat F and use something like synctoy to copy the contents of E over to F?
 
bass_junkie83 said:
There is no option for for adding a mirror when I right click E. With the F drive, the only option not grayed out when I right click is 'delete volume'.
Click to expand...
What, not even greyed out?
 
This is my options when right clicking on a drive in disk manager.

Untitled3.png


To be honest, I am starting to lean towards the idea of syncing drives as it seems much more my level than setting up RAID.
 
Your disks are set to be dynamic. Don't know if that matters or not. Assuming the data is the same on both disks, I'd sacrifice one and reformat it and see what the options are. It MAY be an underlying technology of the chipset - I'm using a P67 chipset which has Intel RAID and mirroring software inbuilt.

I'm also not sure why Neil thinks windows mirroring is useless though...
 
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