Help with RAID

[Adamware1]

I have just bought another samsung spinpoint drive and i want to raid but dont know how. is there a way to do this without removing all the data on the first HDD. will a software raid do the same job as a hardware raid & and how easy is it.

My first HDD is the 500Gb Samsung spinpoint
My new is the 320Gb Samsung spinpoint

[LSG501]

google is your friend on this sort of question as its a huge topic. You don't even mention what type of raid you want to do.

Basically you can do raid but we would advise not to. You need two matching hard drives or you lose the extra space on the other drive.

You would also only be able to do a mirrored raid array (redundancy rather than performance) but you would end up loosing 180gigs of the 500gig drive.

[latency]

Only time RAID is useful is on a server / workstation or if you have a top end RAID card (3Ware or similar), otherwise there are no real benefits.

On a custom rig I'd recommend against it, since parts and software get changed out often.

[Adamware1]

if i insall the second HDD without raid will windows be able to auto find a driver or will i need to configure it manually via the BIOS.

[TriggerHappy]

Windows should pick it up automatically.