RAID 0 to RAID 1-Possible to switch???

Coulda swore I posted this yesterday, but-

I am getting an R3 in a few days and it is coming with RAID 0. What I would like to do is have it set up as RAID 1. (Unless someone convinces me otherwise-Tell me why I should or shouldn't switch). Is this possible to do without losing all the data? Like Respawn. I would like to keep it. Or, is there a way to back up Respawn then wipe and put it back on. Not just drivers and OS, but the Respawn partition. I like to have that OEM feeling. You know??

 

ya, you should be able to do this...just create the respawn media then go into the raid manager (not sure of the key combo) setup the raid 1 and restore the image. you will have half of the storage but double the redundancy. Why you would want to do this on a performance laptop is beyone me, but you shouldnt have any issues.

 

I would buy a ssd. Just as fast as raid 1 plus you could have extra storage on the second bay

 

I think you mean raid 0. raid 1 doesn't give any performance gains it mirrors the hard drives so both hard drives contain the same data. raid 1 is good if you are sure 100% that you will never have to reformat due to Viruses, Trojans, Registry errors, etc. I end up reformatting about once every year, sometimes twice.

 

Yeah. I'm kinda asking opinions here. The issue with RAID 0 is that if something happens-disk error, corruption, crash-I lose it all. With RAID 1 I wouldn't

Storage, not an issue. Got a TB now and only using 400 GB. Also hae a 500, 250, 80 external.

 

I have RAID 1, and I definitely like it, but in a funny way, I'm beginning to think it's overkill for its redundancy value. RAID 1 is statistically far more reliable than RAID 0, that is true, but modern equipment is so good and backup software systems are so widely available now that an individual user's home- and hobby-needs may be entirely adequately served without RAID 1.

And like Mazda says, if you end up doing wipes and rebuilds as a normal matter of use over the months, you are a "backup-er" anyway, so you are probably safe without RAID 1. But definitely, RAID 0 with two disks cuts the statistical mean-time-between-failures in half from that of a single disk, and a loss is total because both disks must run all the time. RAID 1 can only die when both disks are simultaneously dead. Keep in mind though that your individual experience may be that RAID 0 still works fine for years; one can never exactly know what will happen with individual drives.

 

Thank you all. I think I'm gonna leave it as RAID 0. But, if anyone wants to chime in with an opinion, please do so as I am wide open.

So RAID 1 would be most beneficial for servers and such? As far as practical home users, (that back-up), not much benefit there, huh?

 

IF you are running good backup software (or don't have anything of great value on the machine) then you won't be seriously harmed by a failure. You will be inconvenienced for sure, but that is your choice. You are trading performance (but perhaps not tons of it) for reliability.

If it is RAID 0 already, then (though I am a RAID 1 guy myself) I would probably leave it as-is. Servers and businesses definitely need hardware RAID redundancy (and your/my Intel RST application is software RAID, technically), having often MUCH more money in their data than in their computer hardware, but if you buy backup services from any such company, then they are your "RAID 1" setup (but they probably run higher RAID modes than 1 and run many systems in fancy redundant schemes.)

But whatever you do, be good about automated backup and you will be fine. Don't leave it to pure chance. I like Dropbox for backup and synchronization, but it isn't for everyone. There are lots of good companies in the backup industry now. Pick one and you'll sleep well at night.

 

I like the PJM company! Me. I just use external drives and have one for systemimage and one for data only or downloads that I have-like games, programs, etc. Thanks...

 

Fair enough. Sounds like you have it pretty much covered. Party-on!