Raid and partition question

[IndianScout]

I hope this makes sense what I'm trying to do..

I have 2x 1t and 1 400g, can I make a 400g partition on each of the 1t drives, raid all 3 of them them,

then use the remaining 600g on each drive to make separate partitions and use them as reg drives?

 

[Markyip1]

Short answer: nope. RAID is typically a low-level hardware construct applied to drives before partitions are considered. Assuming you're talking about using the RAID options on your motherboard, and then partitioning within the OS, you're stuck with RAIDing entire disks. RAID setups are specified in your disk controller's BIOS and are applied before an OS takes control of the PC. Once the OS takes control (which is where you can select drives to partition,) the OS already sees the RAID array as a single volume. In typical setup, using motherboard RAID and booting into WIndows, what you're looking to do can't be done.

A qualification to the above statement is that certain Linux distributions support software-RAID, where drives are partitioned and RAIDed entirely in software handled by the Linux OS. Drawbacks to this is that it's a slower, more cumbersome solution that only works within the Linux OS you've set RAID parameters from, and it's a non-starter if you're not planning on using Linux. However, it's feasible (although I don't know for sure) that you can setup what you're looking to do using software-RAID in Linux.

 

[IndianScout]

ty for the very clear answer, I'll just get another 400g..

 

[Dangman]

Matrix RAID will actually allow for what you want to do if you have the ICH8R, ICH9R or ICH10R storage controllers:
http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/matrixstorage_sb.htm

However not 100% sure that the remaining space can be used as a regular drive. But you can RAID different partitions together with Matrix RAID.