Raid Help

Question

I have an XPS 410 currently set up with two hard drives...and I am dual booting into XP and Vista(installed on separate drives)

I am finding that I no longer need the XP as Vista has been working fine for me...and I have other PC's with XP installed in case I need it.

So, I'd like to set up a Raid1 array and only have Vista. Is there any possibility of doing this without having to re-install Vista and all my other programs? I'm guessing no, and I have backed up all my music, photo's, and files onto a USB drive, but it shure would be cool if I didn't lose it all!

Thanks!

TomXPS · Answer

Assuming you never re-loaded vista your all set.   The factor setting on the BIOS (setup) is to have SATA RAID on or something like that.  So make sure that is still set.   You should have a program installed called Intel Storage Manger.   Start that program in Admin mode, right click and sould have run as admin option.   From there you have an option to migrate to RAID 1.    Your orginal drive will be SATA port 0, and the other drive you have to check to see what SATA port it's on.   After about 1 hour the system will be migrated to RAID 1.   Might want to check with the Intel site for a newer version of the storage manager for your RAID controller and chip set.  On my XPS 410 I had some issue with it sort of locking up, worked fine just a pain to use.   Dell has a newer one posted but they usually a rev or 2 behind intel.   To get you chip set and RAID controller info look the device manager in Control panel.   Anyway I setup RAID 1 on my XPS with no problem.

HawgFlies · Answer

I did re-load Vista because I wanted a clean install without all the extra Dell stuff...especially that horrible burner program!

Anyhow...I checked earlier...and Raid is enabled for both drives...so I guess this will work? I'll have to download the Intel program as I never re-installed it.

The drives are not the same size. One is 250Gb, and the other is 320Gb. Will I lose the extra capacity of the larger drive....or can I set up a 250Gb partition and a 70Gb partition?

Thanks again!

HawgFlies · Answer

It's all done....Thanks!

TomXPS · Answer

yea I forgot the the Pre-OS driver is on the OS DVD so you no longer have to load it, since you had it in RAID mode.  May have had a trouble if you would of not been in RAID mode.   Anyway the chip set is 965 express and RAID controller is ICH8R/ICH9R   The following link is the last one I installed.   http://downloadcenter.intel.com/download.aspx?url=/13806/eng/iata76_enu.exe&agr=N&ProductID=2529&DwnldId=13806&strOSs=All&OSFullName=All+Operating+Systems&lang=eng   Seach for iata76_enu.exe on the intel download site.

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