Cloning hard drives before setting up raid?

[n00dl3]

I just bought a second 1b sshd for my business computer and I am going to attempt to set them up in a raid array using Asus's z97 easy set up. Just a few questions

1. Do I have to clone the first drive onto the second in order for all my data to be mirrored?
2. I want to mirror these, is Raid 1 the correct setting?


Thanks in advance for helping a storage newb

 

[kanewolf]

I would recommend cloning or backing up your data in case anything goes WRONG during the RAID setup. It is possible that you could end up formatting. RAID 1 is correct to have data mirrored. BUT RAID is not backups. You still need to continue backups.

 

[n00dl3]

I understand raid is not backup but if one drive goes down I still can run the pc on 1 drive and loose nothing.

 

[kanewolf]

Correct, if everything works correctly. It is sometimes the rebuild after a failure where data is lost. Running in degraded mode usually works.

 

[n00dl3]

One more quicky, If I do not clone my new rive will all my data from drive one be written onto it? Or will only the new data I use after I set the two up be written onto it and mirrored?

Thank you

 

[kanewolf]

If everything works right, it will put ALL the data from the first disk onto the second disk as part of the rebuild process. Again, the rebuild is the dangerous part. There are many stories on here about starting a rebuild and when it completed everything was gone...

 

[n00dl3]

Thank you for all your help, when I set up the raid it says it will delete all the drive data which sucks but I made a third standalone copy of my drive just as a fail safe...

If I let the bios delete all my data, then I set up raid1 and then clone my backup onto each drive would that work? Or is there a better way to not have it delete all the data or to recover it when raid is setup?