How do I set these up without losing existing data?

[Felidire]

I have 3 HDDs & 3 SSDs, and I'm trying to achieve the following:

SATA0 - 480GB SSD (running windows 10)
SATA1 - 3TB HDD (need to xfer important files to the SATA 4&5 HDDs before formatting this. Can't access files on unallocated portion from previous PC).
SATA2 - 480GB SSD
SATA3 - 480GB SSD (wanted to configure them as RAID 0, no big deal if I can't, but I'm unable to wipe the 2 partitions)
SATA4 - 2TB HDD
SATA5 - 2TB HDD (need to configure these as RAID 1, tried to disable CSM in BIOS, but it keeps reenabling.

Normally I'd just guess my way through it all, but there's a lot of important files on the 3TB HDD; so I'd rather do it properly and not risk losing it all. Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[captaincharisma]

backup all your files to the HDD you are not going to put in a RAID. all drives that will be put in a RAID array will lose all data no matter what level it is

 

[USAFRet]

SATA2 - 480GB SSD
SATA3 - 480GB SSD (wanted to configure them as RAID 0, no big deal if I can't, but I'm unable to wipe the 2 partitions)

Don't. Apart from a very few use cases, you'll see no benefit with SSD + RAID 0.

The only way to ensure your critical data is not compromised during this reconstruction is to have it completely offline and elsewhere during the process.

 

[Felidire]

SATA2 - 480GB SSD
SATA3 - 480GB SSD (wanted to configure them as RAID 0, no big deal if I can't, but I'm unable to wipe the 2 partitions)

Don't. Apart from a very few use cases, you'll see no benefit with SSD + RAID 0.

The only way to ensure your critical data is not compromised during this reconstruction is to have it completely offline and elsewhere during the process.

I'm probably just going to use those as scratch disks for things like photoshop. If there's no benefit then I won't bother - but still, I can't figure out how to remove those two partitions on disk 2; it's gonna bug the hell outta me. 😛

I'll unplug the 3TB before I go put the 2TB HDDs into RAID 1. Any idea how I could access the files on the remaining 746.52GB, on the 3TB HDD? I've totally forgotten how I did it before.

Edit: Used EaseUS and recovered 500GB of really important stuff from the unallocated portion of the 3TB.

backup all your files to the HDD you are not going to put in a RAID. all drives that will be put in a RAID array will lose all data no matter what level it is

So there's no need for me to do anything special to the two 2TB drives, before I start poking around in the BIOS?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Any advice would be appreciated!

So, what's the problem? Just start doing it.

• 1. Convert disks 4, 5 to mbr (they are under 2TB so no need to use GPT)
  2. Convert disks 4, 5 to dynamic disks;
  3. Create mirrored volume on disks 4, 5 (raid 1), format ntfs;
  4. Copy data from disk 1 to volume on disks 4/5;
  5. Delete partition from disk 1 and convert disk to GPT (GPT is necessary to access disk space beyond 2TB);

There is a problem - bootloader partition is located on disk 2, but OS on disk 0;
I'd suggest moving bootloader partition to disk 0 also.

• 6. Shrink C: partition on disk 0 by 100mb;
  7. Create EFI system partition in freed up space;
  8. Transfer bootloader partition from disk 2 to disk 0;
  9. Verify that you can boot the system with only disk 0 connected;
  10. Clean disk 2.

 

[Felidire]

Any advice would be appreciated!

So, what's the problem? Just start doing it.

• 1. Convert disks 4, 5 to mbr (they are under 2TB so no need to use GPT)
  2. Convert disks 4, 5 to dynamic disks;
  3. Create mirrored volume on disks 4, 5 (raid 1), format ntfs;
  4. Copy data from disk 1 to volume on disks 4/5;
  5. Delete partition from disk 1 and convert disk to GPT (GPT is necessary to access disk space beyond 2TB);

There is a problem - bootloader partition is located on disk 2, but OS on disk 0;
I'd suggest moving bootloader partition to disk 0 also.

• 6. Shrink C: partition on disk 0 by 100mb;
  7. Create EFI system partition in freed up space;
  8. Transfer bootloader partition from disk 2 to disk 0;
  9. Verify that you can boot the system with only disk 0 connected;
  10. Clean disk 2.

Thanks for that, I'm sure it'll help a few others in the future too.

Now I just get "VGA card not supported by uefi driver" when trying to set up RAID 1, never had that issue using GTX 680 on the VIII Ranger board (currently using asus tuf z270 mark 1) but it's 5:30am so I'll try deal with that tomorrow.