# Adding a 2nd drive to enable RAID 0, do I need to format?



## 15th Warlock (Apr 26, 2011)

Hey guys, got a few questions, and I know this is the perfect place to look for the right answer. 

Just ordered a couple identical 120GBs SSD that I intend to use in RAID 0 for my OS, but due to limited supply, I had to purchase one from Newegg and one from Amazon. The drive from Newegg arrives tomorrow, but the one from Amazon will take at least a couple weeks to arrive. 

Knowing me, I'm gonna want to start using the first drive as soon as I get my hands on it, and this is my first time using a RAID 0 setup by adding a second drive as opposed to enabling it to two identical drives at once. 

My questions are: Do I need to format  and install everything again once my 2nd drive arrives and I enable RAID 0?

Is there a way to just transfer the data equally between both drives without having to format?

If this cannot be done, can I just clone the first drive to a backup drive an then back again to the RAID 0 drives once enabled? Is that even recommended when using SSDs?

As I said, this is my first time using RAID 0 for my OS, and I feel like a noob  Please let me know what you guys think. Thank you very much!


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## suraswami (Apr 27, 2011)

Yes, u need to format both the drives.


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## 15th Warlock (Apr 27, 2011)

OK, that sucks 

How about cloning the first drive and then using the image once both drives are "linked"?


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## suraswami (Apr 27, 2011)

15th Warlock said:


> OK, that sucks
> 
> How about cloning the first drive and then using the image once both drives are "linked"?



you can't do that either, because u want the OS to be installed on a RAID 0 drive.  The OS install will expect the Raid driver which was not present before.  You can try tho.

And oh putting OS on a RAID 0 is not advisable, because if one drive dies u loose whole OS.  RAID 1 for OS is good.


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## 15th Warlock (Apr 27, 2011)

Oh... I see, didn't think about that, I guess Win 7 has to detect the SSDs and RAID 0 in order enable the TRIM command when you first install it. 

Thank you for your advice man! Also, all of my documents are saved to another 500GBs drive by default, maybe I can add another drive to that one for backup purposes. Thanks for the idea.


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## JATownes (Apr 27, 2011)

suraswami said:


> *And oh putting OS on a RAID 0 is not advisable, because if one drive dies u loose whole OS.  RAID 1 for OS is good.*



I would argue this point.  As long as you back-up often, this is not an issue.  I have had my OS on various RAID arrays for years and never had a problem.  Having your OS on a RAID array is what makes the speed boost worthwhile.  Yes, you could have a separate array for "Games" or "Media", but the OS functions will still hold back the array each time it has to be accessed.  

I say for RAID-0 was made for OS's...what other decent purpose would they serve?  I would say 90% of TPU users that run RAID-0 have their OS on it.


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## 15th Warlock (Apr 27, 2011)

JATownes said:


> I would argue this point.  As long as you back-up often, this is not an issue.  I have had my OS on various RAID arrays for years and never had a problem.  Having your OS on a RAID array is what makes the speed boost worthwhile.  Yes, you could have a separate array for "Games" or "Media", but the OS functions will still hold back the array each time it has to be accessed.
> 
> I say for RAID-0 was made for OS's...what other decent purpose would they serve?  I would say 90% of TPU users that run RAID-0 have their OS on it.



Yes, I guess with today's chipsets and drives, the failure rate must be really low, but still, I prefer to configure Win 7 to save all of my important files like documents, pictures and others to another drive, that saves me both drive space, and also a lot of problems as having a drive fail in RAID 0 means your data is unrecoverable, whereas losing the OS means only needing to reformat, still a hassle, but not as bad as losing all your pictures from your last vacation


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## suraswami (Apr 27, 2011)

JATownes said:


> I would argue this point.  As long as you back-up often, this is not an issue.  I have had my OS on various RAID arrays for years and never had a problem.  Having your OS on a RAID array is what makes the speed boost worthwhile.  Yes, you could have a separate array for "Games" or "Media", but the OS functions will still hold back the array each time it has to be accessed.
> 
> I say for RAID-0 was made for OS's...what other decent purpose would they serve?  I would say 90% of TPU users that run RAID-0 have their OS on it.



I install OS on a single fast drive and if the board dies or if I want to upgrade or swap the board I mostly had luck in moving the drive to a different setup and Win7 installs all new components, re-activate and I good to go.  Ofcourse need to do some old driver clean up, but still the OS is intact.

Can u do the same if its on a RAID 0?

Find a single platter hdd that is big enough for OS and apps and it will still be fast enough.

A single SSD is more than enough for OS.

Again I am not debating, its my proven method of usage and others have varying thoughts and results.


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## yogurt_21 (Apr 27, 2011)

suraswami said:


> And oh putting OS on a RAID 0 is not advisable, because if one drive dies u loose whole OS.  RAID 1 for OS is good.



depends on whether you're also using it as your programs drive or not. Os install takes a few minutes. If all you're doing is running it as an os drive than there is zero reason not to run a raid 0 array

raid 0 is only risky on mission critical applications or data you don't have backed up elsewhere. An operating system is neither of those. My nas has a raid 0 array for its os. if one fails I can have my nas back online in under 20 minutes with zero data loss because all of the data is on the raid 1 array, not on the os raid 0 array.

infact using raid 1 on an os drive is moronic imo. what a waste of a hard disk.


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