Windows 7: Upgrade MB and convert to Raid 0 Questions

I just bought a new motherboard with usb 3.0 and a faster FSB and two new 1.5 TB 7200RPM 6.0 SATA hard drives. What I am planning on doing is creating a fresh image of my hard drive. Then I will replace the mb and hard drive with newer ones, create a RAID 0, install windows onto the array, and the restore everything from the image on the external hdd. Would this cause any problems since I am using a new MB or moving from a single hdd to an array?

Hi and welcome to 7F,

In theory that should work, but in practice I think you are going to find it a frustrating experience. RAID0 and Windows installations have a very poor success rate from what we have seen here. If you do a search for RAIDO here you will find many examples of problems, and recommendations to steer clear of it.

As a data drive, RAID0 works perfectly fine ( I have one myself), but as an OS installation its just too problematical (I have attempted this myself without any success). Since you are after a speedy & responsive primary disk, you might consider a solid state drive (SSD), if your budget allows. SSD's beat a RAID0 array hands down all the time.

Regards,
Golden

So a better solution would be to keep my OS on the same drive and use the two others for a data RAID 0. Would installing my games on the array give any benefit or would I need to install them on the OS drive as well? Basically should I just use the data array just to store files, or can I install applications to it?

Thank you for help and quick response.

Hi,

You can use the RAID0 drive to install applications to it, and you will see some performance gains from that, depending on the application, but no where near as good performance as a SSD. In my case, I have:

1. A SSD with the OS, Office, AV and other key applications
2. A RAID0 for a very specific application installed to it, and the associated data files

Its important to note that a RAID0 drive has no redundancy, so if one disk in the RAID0 fails, then you WILL lose everything in the RAID. To use a RAID0, you really should have an external backup system to keep that RAID0 backed-up incase one of the drives fail (FREE Macrium Reflect or other might be a good choice here).

Regards,
Golden

Thank you for your advice.

No worries. Come back any time you need more help.

As mentioned it is possible to image and to restore to a SSD, but you'd have to strip it of all chipset drivers etc first to avoid conflict in the future.


I have most of my games on my RAID 0 - there is a discernible performance increase in load times for most games over a single drive. It's not always night and day - but overall it's worth it.

Also, don't forget to set your new mobo to RAID in the BIOS.

Any non-member drives of the RAID (like the single OS drive) will act the same as if set as AHCI. However, this may be an issue if your BIOS is currently set in IDE and your current OS was installed that way. If that's the case, then you'll need to do a few steps in preparation.

Basically, either option is doable with differing levels of effort required. Not touching the OS and adding a RAID array is the easiest option.