Add a HDD to my raid setup

[Kapdin]

Hey guys, I have been a fan of tom's hardware for a long time but just decided it was about time to join. Anyways I have 2 WD RE4 500gb HDD in raid 0 and would like to bump it up to 3 of them. Now i know i cannot just add one to an existing array but will clone software work just fine cus i know it may cause problems when changing the os hdd. Or since i have win7 do a system backup of this drive to another drive would this be the ticket? thanks.

 

[Kapdin]

Ok let me add a little more information to my problem. I have Win7 on my ocz3 ssd with the two RE4 drives as my storage to the ssd. I also have a WD 6gb 1tb hdd dedicated for my win7 system back up. So I want to add another RE4 drive to make a 3 disk array but was hoping I wouldn't have to reinstall everything since I am theoretically removing drive G: and leaving C: intact. But I am also kind of a freak and will deff. go throught the trouble if there is a hint of problems coming from this restore. Any input would be great.

Thanks.

 

[tomatthe]

What do you mean by the Raid set being storage for the SSD? If you have folders redirected to store things in the raid set you would get errors until you setup the redirection again onto the new set. If you just manually place files on the raid set it shouldn't matter much at all if you break the set and recreate it with 3 drives. Obviously all data on the raid set will be lost when you break it to recreate it with 3 drives so you would need to backup that data.

I'm not sure where cloning software comes into play here if your OS is running on a different drive.


Running 3 drives in Raid 0 is def asking for data loss, but if you've got the important stuff backed up to the single 1tb drive I suppose it's not to risky.

 

[Kapdin]

Ok so I have win7 on the ssd and all my programs/games get installed on the raid so yes pointers. And I know the raid will be whiped clean and yes it will get put back as a 3 disk raid. So there is my question. Since my ssd points to the games on the raid which is now cleaned do I A) have to reinstall everything? or B) since i have a system backup will this just put everything back to normal before the whiping of the raid? (without any chanse of errors).

Thanks

 

[tomatthe]

I'm not sure, perhaps someone else could help.

If I was guessing you may be able to run the restore, and if the drive letter is the same as the old raid set things may work, but I wouldn't count on this going very smoothly.