raid 0 for dummies?

[berninicaco3]

Hi!

I'm setting up a raid 0 array with 2 240gb sandisk extremes.
They just arrived in the mail today, and I've physically installed them and updated the firmware.
I already learned that the two hard drives destined for the raid array need to be plugged into very particular sata ports, and this has been done now.

I have the asrock extreme4 motherboard.
I presently have my OS and everything on a single hard drive; and it's in AHCI mode at the bios.
Once the raid array is set up, I intend to boot again from my single hard drive and use acronis to clone the one hard drive onto the raid array. I'm then giving the one hard drive to my father... hopefully acronis does a better job cloning than norton ghost or easeUS.

Now, do I set up RAID at the bios level, or the OS level?

Should I start by initializing and then reformatting the hard drives?

I'm paused right here-- not sure if raid gets set up first, and I don't want to reformat them wrong somehow. Never done this before.

 

[rive22]

Setup raid in the BIOS, instead of AHCI mode use RAID mode, reboot and follow the screens to set up the array. and you're good to go. Use 128k stripe for best all around performance. No need to preformat anything.

 

[berninicaco3]

thanks! It was that easy.
I was confused at first, because the screen where you set up the raid flashed by too quickly. But I was able to see that control- i got me there, and it was straightforward after that.

Now... trying to figure out how to clone it....