Mixed RAID possible?

[tattooedpariah]

First off, i'm sorry for such a basic question, but I have no idea how to search for this, any strings I use don't give me an answer to my specific question..

What I want to know is, is it possible to use a single drive as a boot/OS drive, and have other drives in a RAID array?

i.e.

SATA0 = 500gb boot drive with OS
SATA1 = 2tb
SATA2 = 2tb
SATA3 = 2tb
SATA4 = 2tb

SATA 1&2, 3&4 running in RAID 1 for mirrored redundancy but SATA0 all by itself, if it fails, the OS is gone.

I don't install anything on my C: drive, right now, that's how my system is set up but it's JBOD.. all my programs and games get installed on D:.. I want to eventually upgrade to having four 4tb disks, and when i do that, i want to switch to RAID1, but I want to keep the 500gb OS disk since I don't use that drive for anything else..

Also, I've been looking at either WD Red NAS drives, or Seagate NAS drives.. I'm trying to wait until the 4gb models get to $150 or less.. any opinions there?

Thanks in advance!

-tattooedpariah

System Specs:
Cooler Master HAF932 Advanced
ASUS Crosshair V Formula Z
AMD FX8150 w/liquid cooling
G.Skill RipJaws Z 32gb DDR3
XFX Radeon HD 7950 3gb GDDR5
BFG 1000W PSU

[DarkAdam]

So what you want to do is Run a normal drive and the rest in RAID? Yes why wouldn't you be able to do that?

[HiVizMan]

Yeah no worries - Install the OS with SATA set to RAID on the single drive first before you fit the other drives please. A tip to save tears down the line, OS is not discriminate as to where the MBR is placed.

Just ensure that your RAID hard drives are all on the same Intel SATA ports and your OS drive is Intel too.

[tattooedpariah]

HiVizMan wrote:
Yeah no worries - Install the OS with SATA set to RAID on the single drive first before you fit the other drives please. A tip to save tears down the line, OS is not discriminate as to where the MBR is placed.

Just ensure that your RAID hard drives are all on the same Intel SATA ports and your OS drive is Intel too.

So just to make sure I understood that right..

1) install single drive in tower, set BIOS to RAID mode, install Win7Pro
2) install extra drives and configure the array

I'm not sure what you mean about the Intel ports? Do you mean to make sure all drives are in the 6 available AMD SB950 SATA ports as opposed to the 2 ASMedia ASM1061 SATA ports?

http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/CROSSHAIR_V_FORMULAZ/#specifications

[Myk_SilentShado]

That's the beauty of RAID, you only RAID together the drives you need to include in the list during setup and you're good to go 🙂

[tattooedpariah]

Myk SilentShadow wrote:
That's the beauty of RAID, you only RAID together the drives you need to include in the list during setup and you're good to go 🙂

I was hoping it'd be simple like that, but never done it before.. my last MB was a crappy ASRock small form and required a floppy drive to install the RAID drivers.. :rolleyes: haha

[HiVizMan]

LOL mean to say in the AMD ports and not to use the Asmedia ports.