creating raid setup = wipe drives?

[Double Jesus]

I just got my new p5k deluxe and I'm trying to set my drives up in a mirrored array on the intel ICH9 sata ports. When I go into setup to create the array it says the disk will be wiped, is it just referring to the mirror destination or both? I really don't want to lose all my data... Anyone have any experience with this board/chipset? Should I use the J-Micron instead?

 

[Sparkyy]

Whenever you go and set up any RAID, does not matter on the board, the chipset, etc; you will have to wipe all drives going in to that RAID. The RAID needs to set up the drives to be used in whatever configuration you are doing and to accomplish this, they must be formatted and then they can be used like normal.

 

[Madwand]

Yeah, when the controller software warns you that they're going to wipe the drives, you can be pretty sure they're not kidding. However, there's often some way to convert a single drive to a RAID configuration -- this depends entirely on the details of the particular RAID implementation. I believe Intel has a state they call "RAID ready", and from that you can convert to certain RAID configurations; RAID 1 is likely to be in the set of supported conversions.

It might be that you have to get the drives to be "RAID ready" at the BIOS level, and do the final conversion from a utility at the Windows level. Things often get trickier when you have to deal with the OS in addition to simple data drives. Sorry, I haven't done this myself (because I like to keep the OS simple and not RAID'd), so you'll have to find out the details elsewhere -- e.g. Intel's docs.

 

[tuskenraider]

I just got my new p5k deluxe and I'm trying to set my drives up in a mirrored array on the intel ICH9 sata ports. When I go into setup to create the array it says the disk will be wiped, is it just referring to the mirror destination or both? I really don't want to lose all my data... Anyone have any experience with this board/chipset? Should I use the J-Micron instead?

I believe with Intel's Matrix Storage Manager you can migrate a RAID0 or 1 setup without losing data.

 

[Madwand]

Here's what Intel's 7.5 docs say:

Create a RAID Volume from a RAID-Ready System

A RAID-ready system is configured with the Serial ATA controller set to RAID mode and with at least one hard drive with no RAID volumes (a pass-through drive). The operating system must have the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager installed. The following RAID configurations are possible (refer to Table 1 of this help file to determine which RAID levels are supported by your system):

RAID Ready to a 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6-drive RAID 0
RAID Ready to a 2-drive RAID 1
RAID Ready to a 3, 4, 5 or 6-drive RAID 5
RAID Ready to a 4-drive RAID 10

Follow the steps below to convert the system to a RAID system by migrating data from the existing system drive to a RAID volume.

Note the serial number of the hard drive that you want to migrate the data from and ensure that it is connected to the system. You will need the serial number later in the procedure to identify this drive as the source drive.

Connect the desired number of additional Serial ATA hard drives to the system to be used as the volume's member drives. Note that these hard drives will need to have a capacity equal to or greater than the capacity of the source hard drive.
Start Windows* and open the Intel® Matrix Storage Console.
Select 'Advanced Mode' from the 'View' menu.
Select 'Create RAID Volume from Existing Hard Drive' from the 'Actions' menu. The 'Create RAID Volume from Existing Hard Drive Wizard' will launch.
Follow the instructions throughout the wizard. The migration will begin once the wizard is completed.
To view the migration status, right-click on the volume name in the device pane and select 'Show Migration Progress'. A tray icon message will pop up when the migration is complete and the volume's 'Status' will display 'Normal in the information pane.
After the migration is complete, restart the system. If you migrated to a RAID 0 volume, use Disk Management from within Windows* to partition and format the empty space created when the two hard drive capacities were combined. You can also use third-party software to extend any existing partitions within the RAID volume.

If you have a single, non-system hard drive that contains program or personal data, you can use the migration feature to use this hard drive as the source drive for a RAID volume

The emphasis is mine -- apparently there's a slight distinction between system and non-system drives in how you can do the conversion.