Raid 1 - First time setup

[Sunin]

I have an MSI K9A2 Platinum mobo that has a hardware level raid controller. I set it up per instructions and it comes up in the boot sequence as RAID 1. When I get into Win XP 64bit it only shows the 1 drive, not the mirror. Is that normal when you use hardware level raid controllers? Reason I ask is I do not want to lose what is on my 1.5TB drive. This is my NAS basically and has pictures and my music collection.

Thanks for any feedback you can provide

 

[mattjw916]

With hardware RAID, the OS only sees what the RAID controller presents to it, i.e. a singe drive.

 

[Cmustang87]

Reason I ask is I do not want to lose what is on my 1.5TB drive. This is my NAS basically and has pictures and my music collection.

Did you backup your information before you went and installed a RAID? As Mattjw916 said, with a RAID the OS will only see it as one single container...unless you partition it out, of course. If you have data on a disk, and you drop that to become part of a new raid... say you had a 1.5TB hard drive, and you bought another one and you decided to RAID them together, the data would be lost since the original partition is gone, AFAIK.

 

[mattjw916]

Some controllers won't touch the original disk when initializing the mirror set. They all work a little bit differently though.

Backup everything to be safe.

 

[Sunin]

Did you backup your information before you went and installed a RAID? As Mattjw916 said, with a RAID the OS will only see it as one single container...unless you partition it out, of course. If you have data on a disk, and you drop that to become part of a new raid... say you had a 1.5TB hard drive, and you bought another one and you decided to RAID them together, the data would be lost since the original partition is gone, AFAIK.

Both 1.5 TB drives were new, unformated, so I'm not concerned about that. I copied data to them after the raid was setup not before. So everything I do to the one instanteously happens to the second from the initial format all the way to each file I place on it? That is cool sorry never delt with hardware level raid, I've always used software level. This is much cooler!

 

[Sunin]

Some controllers won't touch the original disk when initializing the mirror set. They all work a little bit differently though.

Backup everything to be safe.

Or should I shut down the computer tomorrow take both drives and see if they both contain the mirror data on a seperate computer?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Some controllers won't touch the original disk when initializing the mirror set. They all work a little bit differently though.

Backup everything to be safe.

True....some RAID controllers can build a new array and the data will still be there, example..you can take 1 existing hard drive...add a 2nd drive, create a RAID 1 volume with it, and the OS will and all data will still be there like nothing happened.

 

[tonyyy]

You need to install the raid software that will allow you to view the raid and also check the raid status and setup raid managements/alerts/etc.

I believe this is the software you need to install WebPAM

Here is a example of the raid software guide:

http://download.asrock.com/manual/raid/ALiveXFire-eSATA2%20R3.0/English.pdf

I looked up your motherboard

http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=proddesc&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=&cat3_no=&prod_no=1332

RAID Function

- SATA II 1~4 support RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 mode by AMD® SB600
- SATA II 5~6 & 2 eSATA ports support RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 mode by Promise® T3

If your using ports 1 thru 4 then it is using the AMD SB600 raid.

If your using ports 5-6 then you are using the promise t3 raid.

Install the correct software and then proceed to login.

from there you can check to see if your using both disk.

Also note RAID 1 is mirror so in windows you will only see 1.5 TB's. Not 3 TB's just 1.5TB unless you did a RAID 0 then you will see 3TB's