Configuring your RAID Array

When putting two drives together into an array, restart your computer. Type Cntrl+A during start-up in order to enter the RAID BIOS area. After the RAID configuration utility is open, click on Create Array in the Main Menu. You will see all of the drives set up to be in your array in a box on the screen. The “gray” drive name is your boot-up drive, which is the drive you are using now. Now that you see that everything is in order and that all of the drives you will be using are displayed, you can return to the Main Menu by hitting your Esc key.

Click on Configure Drives, hit your Ins (Insert) key to select all drives together, hit Enter, and you will probably see a warning. Just hit Y for Yes in answer to the warning. This process will create a mirror of information on both or all of the drives in your new array. After all of this is done, restart your computer and you are finished.

Replacing a PATA drive with a SATA drive

Turn your computer off and disconnect the power cord. Unplug the IDE and power cords from your PATA drive and unscrew it from the enclosure. Using the other lead from your Y adapter, connect the SATA power cable to your SATA drive. Also connect the free data cable from your RAID controller. Screw your new SATA drive into place in the enclosure, and close everything back up. Connect your power cord again and turn on your computer. You should be able to access your new SATA drive from Windows.

Choosing between Different Types of RAID Arrays

RAID 0 (not technically a true RAID, since there is no “redundancy”) improves computing performance through the use of multiple drives.

RAID 1 mirrors data found on one disk by mimicking it across all of the disks in your array, so that if one disk fails you data is still not lost.

Although safety and performance tend to be concerns when dealing with this array and it requires a minimum of three drives, RAID 5 has been popular because it offers independent readings of different blocks from several different drives, rather than, say, RAID 3 or RAID 4, which must read the same block from all of the drives together.

RAID 10 requires a minimum of four drives and offers both redundancy (mimicking of data) and improved computing performance.

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