How to setup Raid 1 on existing System 7 more questions

[Paul D_381]

Hello Scotteq, I do hope that you are still around and are able to give me instructions on setting up a Raid 1 array, my 70 year old brain can understand. I am in the same boat as JerryJonz and I liked your straight forward explanations without a lot of Computer jargon, but with a touch of humor.

The difference, my system has 3 HDDs and is as follows:
MB = Asus P5Q PRO Turbo
OS = Windows 7 – 64 bit
HDD 3x WDC WD5002ABYS-02B1B0 ATA Device

SATA 1 - Disk 0 = System 100 MB – 84.7 free / C Boot, Page Files 195.31 GB - 170 free / D Storage 270.35 GB – 260 free
SATA 2 - Disk 2 = Healthy (Primary Partition) 465.76 GB – 456.76 free NTFS (As all others are)
In two "Hot Swappable" front bays.

SATA 3 - Disk 1 = L 100 MB – 84.7 free / M Backup 195.31 GB – 182.00 free / N Backup + Storage 270.35 GB – 224.00 free
In internal bay

No floppy drive is installed or available, but USB and DVD Rom and RW are available.

I make a mirror of SATA 1 – Disk 0, very so often with Windows back & Restore onto SATA 3 – Disk 1, but would like to set up a Raid 1 array on SATA 1 – Disk 0 and SATA 2 – Disk 2.
When I set the Bios – Main – Storage Configuration to Raid, the startup sequence will bring up a screen with the option “Start Windows Normal”, which gets me into en endless loop. The second option is “Repair Window”, which can not be successfully completed. With part of the requirements in place, where do I go from here or what do I do next?

 

[68vistacruiser]

My opinion is you should start from scratch as your hard drives are a mess. I don't know why you have so many partitions, but they will complicate everything you do. 1 gig hard drives are pretty cheap now, so buy a pair, set them up as raid 1, and put a fresh copy of windows on it. Then hool up you hot-swap drives and start copying everything over to your new drives, but not in separate partitions, but in separate folders. You will still end up with your two hot-swap drives for back-up of your important stuff if you really want to do it that way.

 

[arkadi]

You cant change storage configuration in BIOS (ide to ahci/raid) on existing OS without some effort.
The "loop" is a storage related BSOD message.
If reinstalling is out of the question you can search something like " migrating windows 7 from ide to ahci/raid" in Google, here is one of many posts about that issue with a solution on toms :
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244840-32-convert-sata-ahci-vista
Hope it helped