Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Jonathan Kaplan
Jonathan KaplanFlag for United States of America

asked on

Starting Raid 1 in Wondiws 10

A client of mine has a Dell workstation that came with Windows 7. He upgraded to Windows 10 and now wants me to Install Raid 1 on the machine. This model does have a hardware raid controller, but I have the impression that if I set up that raid, I''ll have to wipe out the original drive to create a new Raid 1 with the original and new drives.  Am I correct about that? Windows 10 has a feature called Storage Space which can be configured as a Raid 1, but I believe that configures two ADDITIONAL drives as a Raid1 which does not include the original drive, right?

That leaves only the disk  management console in which I know I can add an additional drive to the original. But I have an issue with this function. In order to add a new drive to the original to form a Raid 1, both drives have to be dynamic. The original drive has several partitions, two of which are Recovery partitions and the third is the C; drive.  When I try to convert the drive to dynamic, I get an error message " The operation could not be completed. There is not enough space to complete the request." I know there is lots of space on the C: drive partition. Exactly how much space do I need, or is it the existence of the Recovery partitions that is preventing the conversion?

If there is another diagnosis and/or solution to this issue, I'd like to know. Thanks for any help.
Avatar of David Johnson, CD
David Johnson, CD
Flag of Canada image

This model does have a hardware raid controller This is a cheap <$1 chip, avoid using it like the plague.
Storage Spaces is only for data you cannot boot off of a storage spaces volume and the drives have to be empty.

The Physical Drive doesn't have enough free space to be converted to dynamic at the end of the volumeto create the database for the dynamic disk. To fix the error, you need to shrink the last partition to create such a space via the feature "Shrink Volume".
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Ogandos
Ogandos
Flag of Canada image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
raid from an onboard controller - unless it is a separate RAID controller card -  is considered to be far worse that the software raid
Is it Windows 10 home or pro? If it is Pro, then as above, just use Windows Built-in RAID. It is very reliable and performs very well. You don't require expensive enterprise class disks as you do if you use a RAID controller.

If it is the home version of the OS, then you can't use RAID. Only storage spaces are then available, and that as has been mentioned already can't be used on the disks you are booting from. So either don't use RAID in that situation, or upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro.
To make things simple - take backup of his drive.
Configure the hardware RAID1 - boot the machine from Backup Recovery Media and restore from backup to new RAID configuration.
Boot the machine. That's it.
I have done this operation many times with different RAID types. If the RAID card was not activated before backup you would need to adjust the OS to new hardware (RAID). But with P2P Adjust OS feature of Paragon this can be done in few clicks.