Striped volume over the boot drive

[Bacterius]

Hello,
I have two identical 500GB hard drives, one of which has Windows installed on it along with my programs and another is just a standard disk with other stuff on it (music, videos, etc...). I've been wanting to create a 50GB striped volume over both drives to benefit from faster writing, so I've created two 50GB volumes out of each hard drive respectively, as follows (C:\ is my boot drive with Windows on it):

However when I right click on the bottom-most unallocated volume, I cannot select Striped Volume (or anything else for that matter - only Simple Volume). And when I right click on the other volume, I can select Striped Volume but I cannot choose to add the other volume to the striped array.

Is there a problem here? I would've thought it would be possible to create a striped volume out of two unallocated volumes regardless of the hard drive they are on (provided they are on different hard drives which is the case here). Or am I missing something about basic/dynamic disks, etc...?

Thanks for your input everyone.

 

[Bacterius]

Anyone?

 

[Dixon Butz]

You can't make a raid drive from partitions.

 

[Corazon]

That.

RAID works on a whole-disk basis, you can't make part of a disk RAID and the other part not.

 

[gregrocker]

You need to have Dynamic Disks to Create a Striped Volume.


(click the Paintbox repeatedly)

 

[chrysalis]

As the previous post says first convert the disks to dynamic, then you can add striped volumes.

 

[Bacterius]

Is there any risk or disadvantage to converting my disks to dynamic?

 

[gregrocker]

Basic and Dynamic Disks

 

[chrysalis]

dynamic has less compatabilty, even the windows 7 installer cant use dynamic disks.
If you only plan to use them in windows systems then it be fine.

However assuming you ok wiping the data on a windows reinstall should the day come you do need to reinstall win7 and the disk is still dynamic then there is a procedure using the repair tool command prompt of the install dvd to convert it back to basic so the installer can use it.

 

[gregrocker]

Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk