bill4d Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 I have a SSD I am using for my OS. I also have two 1 TB Western Digital drives I want to use for storage of files. I need some guidance on the proper steps to get the drives up and running. They are brand new and already installed in the computer, but not initialized yet. Do they need to be initialized first and then formatted? Is formatting part of the initializing process? Or, are they separate steps? Then, do I just go into the BIOS on boot up and fix the appropriate settings to configure my RAID array?Thnaks for any help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 9, 2011 Share Posted February 9, 2011 Initializing and formatting are 2 different things.If your mobo supports it then, yes, you configure the raid in the BIOS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bill4d Posted February 9, 2011 Author Share Posted February 9, 2011 Initializing and formatting are 2 different things.If your mobo supports it then, yes, you configure the raid in the BIOS.Is formatting a new drive required after it has been initialized? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 Yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bill4d Posted February 10, 2011 Author Share Posted February 10, 2011 YesOkay next question is:Do I initialize the drives as MBR (Master Boot Record) or GPT (GUID Partition Table) ?Again, these 2 drives will be in RAID 1 and used for file storage and NOT the OS.Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 I guess I was thinking you were talking about the initialization prompt you sometimes get in Windows disk management. Are you referring to something in the BIOS? If so I'm afraid I don't have any experience dealing with that and someone else will have to answer. From a quick skim of this Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table, it appears GPT has some limitations.As of 2010[update] most current OSs support GPT (see OS support of GPT), the major exception being 32-bit Windows which has no support and 64-bit Windows which requires an EFI BIOS for booting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bill4d Posted February 10, 2011 Author Share Posted February 10, 2011 I guess I was thinking you were talking about the initialization prompt you sometimes get in Windows disk management. Are you referring to something in the BIOS? If so I'm afraid I don't have any experience dealing with that and someone else will have to answer. From a quick skim of this Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table, it appears GPT has some limitations.As of 2010[update] most current OSs support GPT (see OS support of GPT), the major exception being 32-bit Windows which has no support and 64-bit Windows which requires an EFI BIOS for booting.Yes. I am speaking of the initializing prcess present in Disk Management of Windows. These are new hard drives, installed in the tower and register in disk management, but have not been initialized yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 10, 2011 Share Posted February 10, 2011 (edited) OK, sorry. I had never installed a new disk in Windows 7. I now see what you are referring to and think MBR is the way to go.Note: The GPT partition style is not recognized by all previous versions of Windows. It is recommended for disks larger than 2TB, or disks uses on Itanium-based computers. Edited February 10, 2011 by -X- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennylutz80 Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 I have a SSD I am using for my OS. I also have two 1 TB Western Digital drives I want to use for storage of files. I need some guidance on the proper steps to get the drives up and running. They are brand new and already installed in the computer, but not initialized yet. Do they need to be initialized first and then formatted? Is formatting part of the initializing process? Or, are they separate steps? Then, do I just go into the BIOS on boot up and fix the appropriate settings to configure my RAID array?Thnaks for any help.I assume you will be using RAID1 for your data drives? you want to configure hardware raid (at BIOS) level. performance is much better Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tripredacus Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 Also recommend use RE drives from WD. I wouldn't trust desktop drives for this setup. Are you doing software or hardware RAID? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bill4d Posted February 28, 2011 Author Share Posted February 28, 2011 Also recommend use RE drives from WD. I wouldn't trust desktop drives for this setup. Are you doing software or hardware RAID?I guess it would be software RAID. After initializing the disk and formatting them, Windows 7 then asked if I wanted to configure them as RAID. So I never even went into the BIOS after the initializing and formatting was done to the new drives. They appear to be functioning fine though.I'm not sure how I could verify that each drive is in fact writing data identical to the other drive.The drives are two, Western Digital 1 TB RE-4 drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 OK, sorry. I had never installed a new disk in Windows 7. Well, for the record the "initialize disk" is there since at least Win2K (really cannot remember NT 3.51/4.0 had the same , but I would think yes).JFYI :http://reboot.pro/12253/page__st__8jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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