questions about RAID

[Nikko]

I'd like to set up RAID on my system. I've never done it before and have
some questions, so I'm looking for help. I'm not sure what RAID level this
is called, but I'd like to set it up so that one drive is a mirror image of
the other. Is that RAID 1? I'll be running WinXP Pro, by the way and using
two Maxtor 250 GB IDE hard drives. Anyway, on to my questions...

1. Do I have to set up RAID when I first do my install of WinXP? That is,
can I do an installation of WinXP and then later add RAID? Or would I lose
all my information on the original drive?

2. Similarly, if I decide for some reason that I want to uninstall RAID down
the road, is it possible to do so without losing the data on my original OS
drive?

3. My mobo (Asus K8V SE Deluxe) manual says it supports SATA RAID. Does this
mean it can also support EIDE/PATA RAID? Or do I need to buy a separate
card?

3. Most importantly, how do I go about actually setting up RAID? In other
words, does setting up RAID involve any differences in physical set-up? Or
is it an option in the BIOS that I need to fiddle with? Or some combination?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[RBM]

Mirror is raid 1 and personally I think the easiest way to do it is after
you load the info on the first HD. You then tell your raid bios that you
want to set up raid one and it will copy the data to the blank HD. Once
you've got the mirror working, if one drive craps out, you get a critical
error message then you either ignore it and go on working with the good HD
or you snap in a new HD and tell it to copy to that one. Its pretty easy.
Yes, you can dismantle the raid at any time and use either drive by itself.
Just be careful flashing your mb bios while using raid,it can be tricky

 

[RBM]

For some reason, I missed half your questions. The SATA raid is probably
only for the SATA controller. The on board raids that I'm familiar with have
their own bios, but you first have to activate the controller and set it to
"raid" in the MB bios, but believe me if I can do it anyone can

 

[Veritech]

Looks like you might be out of luck, on the raid front, as you only have ide
drives, however if you might be able to get and sata-pata convertor, i've
seen them bundled with motherboards but i have no idea where to get them.