Can i use RAID 1 ?

[chamjiee]

hi
i have Dell optiplex 755 . it has 8gb ram . and two hard disks . one is sata 250gb seagate and other is ide maxtor 80gb which is connected through ide to usb converter .

a screenshot of the disk management is attached .

can i configure the partition labelled win7 of disk0 in raid 1 with the partition f of disk1 .?

i know how to configure raid but i need to know if i can in my case ? (the issue is not how to configure raid but is if i can do it )


forget that the usb drive will be a bottleneck in syncing because of inherintly low speed .
i just want to know if i can or not ?
its a bit of experiment . i just want to play it and want to play it safe and with valid reasons . not just go out and experiment it.

the hard disk (250gb sata one ..) is configured as legacy .. which was a default .. and now i have installed windows and all my programs so i cant re do all those things so it will be in this mode .

 

[VistaKing]

Chamjiee

For RAID setup you would want to use the exact speed of both drives and capacity of the drives.

Example : both drives are 250GB with either 7200rpm or 10000rpm

 

[chamjiee]

i want it at partition level .. not at drive level /
i will make a partition of same size on second disk and same file system .
and then convert both to dynamic disks and configure a raid array .. ?

 

[VistaKing]

Raid is hard drive level not partition level

 

[chamjiee]

Raid is hard drive level not partition level

Hmm I am confused. Because I red that if two drives are not of same size then the lowest common space is used. And I have I vmware added two different sizes hard disks and partitiond them and configured one partition on each for a raid setup. I only kept the sizes of the partitions same. So the results was that I could be raided and also have different number and sizes of partitons on each disk.

I did this sorta things long ago. What I didn't do was that I didn't raided the partition on which will windows was installed. And this is what I now want to do but in real situation.

If the above is impossible windows. Then I might have done that In redhat.

But after all its the first point that I raised that confuses me

 

[VistaKing]

If you want to partition disk 1 you can .

 

[chamjiee]

Sorry VistaKing I just edited the above message as I just remembered something from past

 

[smarteyeball]

Basically if you want to RAID your drives, you will have to wipe your drives - create the array, then partition.

Unfortuantely, if you create a RAID array with your current drives the total size will be 80GB. The remainder will be wasted. No OS will see it, or be able to use it.

Such an array can only be as big as the smallest member disk.

Aside from satisfying your curiosity, it's just not worth it mate. Doable but pointless.

 

[VistaKing]

It's pointless to raid different size hard drives

 

[kbrady1979]

I don't know what problems you would run into trying to set up a RAID array with a SATA drive and an IDE drive, or if it's even possible, but RAID is finicky enough when you have identical drives, so introducing variables to the equation may not give good results.

 

[chamjiee]

ok thanks ..
i have just a curious mind and want to experiment..
thanks i wont raid it .