Trouble Setting up RAID

[Toastytoast99]

I have a 500gb and a 1Tb WD Blue drives and whenever I try to turn on Raid mode in my bios windows fails to start. I am new to raid and stuff but all I want to do is make both drives act as one big one. If there is a simpler way please let me know.

CPU: AMD FX 6300
Mobo: Asus M5A97 LE R2 2.0
GPU: EVGA GTX 760 2 GB
RAM: 8 Gigabytes G.Skill Ripjaws
Power Supply: Corsair 750M
Not sure if this helps at all but i put it just in case. Thanks to anyone who can help

 

[drtweak]

1) When doing RAID the drives need to be the same size. It's Just how RAID works. Can you use different sizes? Yes but what will happen is it will default to the smallest size of the hard drives.

So in your case you have a 500GB and a 1TB, because RAID requires the drives to be the same size you will lost 500GB of your 1TB and will not be able to use it.

2) The reason why windows restarts on startup is because you don't have the right drivers installed to boot from a RAID Let alone have a RAID setup. You can't just change it to RAID and expect it to work. You have to 1) Turn on RAID, 2) Setup a RAID (RAID 1, 0, 10, 5 ect) and then you have to install windows.

NOTE:!!!!!! WHEN SETTING UP A RAID IT WILL ERASE ALL DATA ON THE HARD DRIVES!!! DO YOU SET IT UP UNLESS YOU HAVE EVERYTHING BACKED UP.

And now my question. Why do you want RAID?

 

[Toastytoast99]

1) When doing RAID the drives need to be the same size. It's Just how RAID works. Can you use different sizes? Yes but what will happen is it will default to the smallest size of the hard drives.

So in your case you have a 500GB and a 1TB, because RAID requires the drives to be the same size you will lost 500GB of your 1TB and will not be able to use it.

2) The reason why windows restarts on startup is because you don't have the right drivers installed to boot from a RAID Let alone have a RAID setup. You can't just change it to RAID and expect it to work. You have to 1) Turn on RAID, 2) Setup a RAID (RAID 1, 0, 10, 5 ect) and then you have to install windows.

I dont know much about storage but i just want the drives to function as one big folder. Do you know any other ways to do it?

NOTE:!!!!!! WHEN SETTING UP A RAID IT WILL ERASE ALL DATA ON THE HARD DRIVES!!! DO YOU SET IT UP UNLESS YOU HAVE EVERYTHING BACKED UP.

And now my question. Why do you want RAID?

 

[drtweak]

???

 

[Toastytoast99]

I dont know why my response didnt show up there. I asked if there were any alternatives to Raid that are easy to do.

 

[drtweak]

Again my question is why you want to do this? What is it you are trying to do. You want redundancy? a bigger storage without buying bigger hard drive? ect.

 

[Toastytoast99]

Again my question is why you want to do this? What is it you are trying to do. You want redundancy? a bigger storage without buying bigger hard drive? ect.

I just think it would be easier to use if they worked as one big folder. So pretty much a bigger storage that works as one folder.

 

[drtweak]

Few things

1) That would be a RAID 0. It has NO REDUNDANCY! If one drive fails ALL DATA IS GONE ON THAT RAID! It does not store some files on one and some on the other. its a 50/50. Half the file on one half the file on the other. So unless its either meaningless data or you have a backup then DON"T DO A RAID 0 like you want to

2) Again ALL RAID's requires drives to the the same size or you WILL LOST SPACE (See my first post). So you will actually be LOSING Space not Gaining anything

3) Yes RAID 0 Can be faster especially with RAID 0 (I know. I have a RAID 0 of 2 2TB Hard drives and get around 250 MBps read and write) But again I have a 4TB drive as a backup.

4) If you install windows on a RAID you WILL HAVE TO REINSTALL WINDOWS! Again because when you make a RAID it ERASES EVERYTHING! NO way around this! You can back everything up but you still need to reinstall because the RAID drivers are different than the normal SATA Drives.


My suggestion in your case since you are just looking for more space

Get a bigger hard drive and add it in as an extra drive.