Raid 0 Please help.

[natefostersr]

The goal here is to Set up Raid 0 with my 2 1TB hard drive and they are not the boot Disk (I have 1 SSD).
I have my old dell 1TB disk. I also have a new similar matching brand 1 TB disk. See below

Now it wont let me EXTEND THE PARTITION because this error - ** the volume requires contiguous disk extents **
Here is what it looks like:

I assume after i make both disks dynamic and equal i can somehow set up raid 0 ?
I cant figure out anything I've been reading forums for about 2 hours please help me I'm slightly noobish so I need pretty exact instructions. Thanks !
Again i need help with fixing the disks then setting up Raid 0 for the 2 non boot disks. Just to be clear Thanks again.
Fix my prob and i will ship u something cheap from eBay (if u want)

 

[sminlal]

Do you want to have nothing but one big RAID-0 volume with the two 1TB disks?

Is there anything on the two 1TB disks that you want right now?

You have a problem because "Disk 0" has the boot partition for Windows 7. Ordinarily, I'd just advise you to delete all of the partitions on "Disk 0" and "Disk 2" and start from scratch, but there may not be any way to get rid of the "System Reserved" partition on "Disk 0" without reinstalling Windows.

 

[natefostersr]

Yes I want to make both 1TB Hitachis a big Raid 0 (they are just used for Data)
There is nothing I haven't backed up on my 2 1TB disks.

Disk 0 = 1TB Hitachi Data Drive brand new.
Disk 1 = 64GB SSD for My OS Win7
Disk 2 = 1TB Hitachi Was in my Dell with Vista. The 15GB Unallocated partition was the backup for Vista.

Does that help ? Do you mean reinstall Windows Vista on Disk 2 ? I will do whatever is necessary to fix the setup if its possible while Keeping my SSD as the Boot or OS disk.

 

[natefostersr]

Here is a better starting point I hope. I made a change.

As you can see Disk 2 still has a (healthy OEM Partition) is that a problem? can it be fixed ?
Or can we skip right over it and setup Raid 0 ?

 

[natefostersr]

Quick update I tried to delete oem partition with disk part and it is failing ?!

 

[sub mesa]

You need to right click on free space (no partitions) and then select "New Striped Volume" or something. Right now you just have two separate disks with each a normal partition on it.

Your disk0 also has the 100MB system partition as sminlal pointed out. You can try removing it, but i guess that's not possible? You may need to insert that disk in another PC to remove the partition. But before you actually do that, make sure you can still boot without disk0 being present.

 

[natefostersr]

You need to right click on free space (no partitions) and then select "New Striped Volume" or something. Right now you just have two separate disks with each a normal partition on it.

Your disk0 also has the 100MB system partition as sminlal pointed out. You can try removing it, but i guess that's not possible? You may need to insert that disk in another PC to remove the partition. But before you actually do that, make sure you can still boot without disk0 being present.

Thanks for your help ! I am using Disk Part to ZERO out Disk 2 completely. I gues after that i need to somehow format it ?
Then should i also delete this 100MB partition on Disc 0 ? Seems logical ? BTW Correct i cannot delete it however i cold "wipe" zero this Disk 0 the same way as Disk 2.
From there i see the next thing to do you said is create new stripped volume. If i get that far without a hiccup, then what?

 

[sub mesa]

Try to remove the 100MB system partition on disk0. Be careful though: it might cause boot problems; though i'm not sure about how important the partition is for booting.

 

[sminlal]

I'd advise caution as to removing the Disk 0 partition because it looks to me like it's the Windows 7 boot partition. When you install Windows 7, it creates a 100MB "system reserved" partition that can be used to recover the OS partition if it gets corrupted. If there's more than one disk with free space available when you install Windows then it puts it on different disk than the OS partition.

I suspect if you delete that partition then you'll render your system unbootable. You might be able to recover from that by booting from the Windows 7 DVD and doing a repair, but I have no experience with that so I can't recommend it.

I'm pretty sure the following will work, but will entail a bit of work:

- disconnect everything except the SSD
- re-install Windows on the SSD (you'll also have to reinstall all your programs)
- reconnect everything
- delete the "System Reserved" partition from "Disk 0"

That, combined with your (hopefully successful) clearing of "Disk 1" should put you in a position to create a RAID set on the two 1TB drives.

 

[natefostersr]

Best answer selected by natefostersr.

 

[natefostersr]

Reinstalling windows was the ticket. I was then able to simply erase that partition. Nothing else would work not even nuke or diskpart.
Lesson learned.
Would you tell me how to set up raid 0 now ?

 

[natefostersr]

Ok i think i did it i stripped them together is this right??

 

[sminlal]

You've got it - congratulations!

If the files on that "F:" drive are important to you make sure you've got them backed up. With RAID 0 you'll loose EVERYTHING on your "F:" drive if EITHER of your 1TB disks fail.