Installing Drivepool with exisitng mirrored drives - Best Practice?

[philbio]

I am installing Drivepool into an existing Win 7 system with some mirrored drives and would like some advice as to the best method to convert them to mirrored disk set under Drivepool?

 

I was thinking of breaking the set under Windows and then having to format one of the disks and then define it under Drivepool? The risk is if the single disk fails while mirroring to the new drive data can be lost.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

This really depends on how you're mirroring the drives, and if you have other disks available.

 

If you're using dynamic disks (from disk management), then, you'd need to remote at least one from the array and re-partition it. We don't currently support dynamic disks, I believe. So you'd need to convert it to a basic, which means you have to re-partition the disk.

When this is happening, if the other disk fails, then yes, you run the risk of losing data. However, data recovery tools may help. 

 

However, if you have a spare/third disk, you could add that to a pool, copy the contents to the pool and then break the mirror.

 

HOwever, if this is a "hardware" RAID (done on a controller card or your motherboard), then it depends on how the controller handles it. And in this case, the safest bet would be that spare/third drive option.

[philbio]

Thanks for the info, the disks are mirrored under windows (dynamic). A 3rd disk of equal or greater size will prove insurance against data loss, this is my only "safe" option.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Safer is always better!

 

And yeah, Dynamic disks are tricker to move from...

But again, just copy the data out first, then break the mirror, delete the dynamic volumes (they'll be a different color than the other disks) and that should "convert" them to basic. (It should say "Basic" under the disk number).