Adding raid 1 to a e 520

I have a e 520, I am thinking I want to add a raid 1 (mirror) drive, am I correct in that all I have to do is pop in a 2nd sata drive of the same size open the intel raid matrix and follow the wizzard? Is there any risk to my original drive.....well at least the data on my original drive?

Am I correct that should the original drive fail the 2nd one would take over just like nothing happened? (with warnings of course?) at which time I could pop in a new drive etc.

Responses(2)

mombodog

12.7K Posts

0

January 9th, 2008 03:00

Dell makes no mention of migrating from non-raid to raid on that model, so I am suspecting it cannot be done.

Usually you have to start fresh and set up the raid array from scratch and then install the OS.

You can try it, using the Matrix software in Windows, but back up your data, you may lose it experimenting.

Someone else may post that has done it sucessfully.

"Am I correct that should the original drive fail the 2nd one would take over just like nothing happened? (with warnings of course?) at which time I could pop in a new drive etc."

Yes

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dime520/en/OM_en/NH730A01.pdf page 27

TomXPS

1.3K Posts

0

January 9th, 2008 14:00

If your system has the Intel Storage Matrix software installed you should be all set for RAID 1. Both of the Dells I bought had the software installed and had the BIOS set for SATA RAID. Both of these were XPS so not sure on your model.

You should buy a drive of the same make and model # as the orginal. Sometimes a drive of the same size that is not a match may be a bit smaller than the orginal. You could buy a drive bigger.

After installing the new drive use the Storage Matrix software to migrate to RAID 1.

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Adding raid 1 to a e 520