Leendert van Achteren

Currently I’m running only 1 hard disk in my pc. Now I decided to install a second drive and to set my disks up in a RAID 1 configuration to prevent data loss. Here’s how I did it.

1. I bought a second drive which resembles the first drive. In my case another 1GB Western Digital Green which is know for low energy usage and low noise.
2. I converted my first drive to a Dynamic Disk through the Windows Disk Management tool. This can only be done after you installed Windows 7. This activity took approximately 1 second.
3. I shut down the PC and physically installed the extra hard drive.
4. In the Windows Disk Management tool I ignored the proposal to have it initialised.
5. I selected the old Disk in the Windows Disk Management tool and chose it to be mirrored by the new disk.
6. It then started synchronising and indicated so in the status.

Here’s an overview of the various RAID configuration being supported or not in the different Windows 7 versions. Thanks to Alan.

Raid 0 (Spanning/Stripped) is supported in every Windows 7 version (Beta/RC and RTM/Final) using software raid
Raid 1 (Mirror) is supported in Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate (Beta/RC and RTM/Final) using software raid

Raid 5 is not support in Windows 7 (Beta/RC and RTM/Final) using software raid.  You will need to use hardware (ie, a raid controller) or use a server operating system for Software raid.