RAID-1 for Non-Bootable Drive

I am hoping to get a little help with what I want to set up.

I have an OCZ Vertex 3 SSD and 2 WD caviar blue HDDs. I have them installed on an ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z MB. I have Win 7 Home Installed on the SSD and would like to set up a RAID 1 array with the HDDs for my data storage (music, pictures, etc.). From what I understand I must do a hardware RAID setup since Win 7 Home does not support the software RAID array.

I was hoping someone could provide guidance or a tutorial on how to do this. The only information I could find is how to install windows on the array and not use it as a non-bootable array for data storage.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You set the array up in the motherboard BIOS first. Then windows will see it as one drive. After that you just format it and use it like any other drive.

alphanumeric said:

You set the array up in the motherboard BIOS first. Then windows will see it as one drive. After that you just format it and use it like any other drive.

I have set it up in the BIOS; however, only my SSD is in "my computer." The HDDs do not show up at all. In the disk management, they show up as two unallocated drives shown. If i format them separately they are assigned a different letter drive and do not operate as an RAID-1 array.

I must be missing something completely obvious.

pparks1 said:

I'd reconsider going the RAID 1 route for your data. The reason I don't necessarily like RAID1 mirrors for data is that if you do something silly, or get a virus, with a RAID configuration it's going to wipe out both drives at the same time. I instead would run with 1 drive as a primary and have a job backing up the first drive to the second one regularly or mirroring the data in intervals (such as every 4 hours). This way, a mistake wont' wipe your data in both places.

Regardless, remember that RAID is NOT a substitute for backing up. It provides redundancy, but should NEVER, EVER be confused with a backup.

I appreciate the recommendation. Since I apparently can not get my drives set up the way I would like them, I may have to go that route.

If windows is seeing two separate drives then the RAID array didn't get setup correctly. I didn't look up your motherboard but some have dedicated RAID SATA ports and your drives have to be connected to them for it to work. If you really want to try it go over your motherboard manuals instructions. As mentioned RAID-1 only protects you if one drive fails hardware wise. If your file system gets mangled by a virus or windows glitches, it glitches both drives.