I have 2 external eSATA drives which I have striped in Vista to make a large
volume.

If I reformat my PC can I add the volume back without losing data?

It sounds like you made a Raid 0 array with two external USB drives.
If so, why on earth would you do this, particularly since the question you
posted indicates you do not clearly understand how Raid arrays work?
Seriously, I have absolutely no idea why anyone would do this.
Apart from the challenge of doing it I don't know a good reason for anyone
to trust a Raid 0 array as the main drive in a computer under any
circumstances as there is no appreciable speed gain for the risk of data
loss compared to modern, less expensive single drive solutions.
Creating a Raid 0 array in an external drive reflects a thought process that
I would like to understand better.

To add, why an earth did you do that for a data drive?

"K" wrote in message
...
I have 2 external eSATA drives which I have striped in Vista to make a
large volume.

If I reformat my PC can I add the volume back without losing data?

"trouble" wrote in message
...
It sounds like you made a Raid 0 array with two external USB drives.
If so, why on earth would you do this, particularly since the question you
posted indicates you do not clearly understand how Raid arrays work?
Seriously, I have absolutely no idea why anyone would do this.
Apart from the challenge of doing it I don't know a good reason for anyone
to trust a Raid 0 array as the main drive in a computer under any
circumstances as there is no appreciable speed gain for the risk of data
loss compared to modern, less expensive single drive solutions.
Creating a Raid 0 array in an external drive reflects a thought process
that I would like to understand better.

I guess I wrote my post badly, and I guess you didin't read what I wrote.

I have 2 ESATA external drives - NOT USB.

And you made a lot of assumptions without bothering to ask for
clarification.

The volume is for the storage of data I don't mind losing in the event of a
drive failure. Mainly it is video I am editing from a HD camcorder, so
using RAID 0 gives me a little bit of speed advantage which is good for
working with huge media files.

Just for reference, I understand RAID very well - I just have no real world
experience of using Vista software RAID and have always performed it using
HP hardware RAID in servers.

Do you know the answer to my original question? If I reformat the SYSTEM
disk and reinstall Vista what will happen to the RAID array? Do I need to
take data off first and recreate it or will I be able to add it back in
after install?

Yes back up everything before you create your RAID!

Dynamic Storage Terms:
A volume is a storage unit made from free space on one or more disks. It can
be formatted with a file system and assigned a drive letter. Volumes on
dynamic disks can have any of the following layouts: simple, spanned,
mirrored, striped, or RAID-5.
A simple volume uses free space from a single disk. It can be a single
region on a disk or consist of multiple, concatenated regions. A simple
volume can be extended within the same disk or onto additional disks. If a
simple volume is extended across multiple disks, it becomes a spanned volume.
A spanned volume is created from free disk space that is linked together
from multiple disks. You can extend a spanned volume onto a maximum of 32
disks. A spanned volume cannot be mirrored and is not fault-tolerant.
A striped volume is a volume whose data is interleaved across two or more
physical disks. The data on this type of volume is allocated alternately and
evenly to each of the physical disks. A striped volume cannot be mirrored or
extended and is not fault-tolerant. Striping is also known as RAID-0.
A mirrored volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is duplicated on two
physical disks. All of the data on one volume is copied to another disk to
provide data redundancy. If one of the disks fails, the data can still be
accessed from the remaining disk. A mirrored volume cannot be extended.
Mirroring is also known as RAID-1.
A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume whose data is striped across an
array of three or more disks. Parity (a calculated value that can be used to
reconstruct data after a failure) is also striped across the disk array. If a
physical disk fails, the portion of the RAID-5 volume that was on that failed
disk can be re-created from the remaining data and the parity. A RAID-5
volume cannot be mirrored or extended.
The system volume contains the hardware-specific files that are needed to
load Windows (for example, Ntldr, Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com). The system
volume can be, but does not have to be, the same as the boot volume.
The boot volume contains the Windows operating system files that are located
in the %Systemroot% and %Systemroot%\System32 folders. The boot volume can
be, but does not have to be, the same as the system volume.

Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
Click Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then
double-click Computer Management.
In the left pane, click Disk Management.
In the lower-right pane, right-click the basic disk that you want to
convert, and then click Convert to Dynamic Disk.

NOTE:You must right-click the gray area that contains the disk title on the
left side of the Details pane. For example, right-click Disk 0.
Select the check box that is next to the disk that you want to convert (if
it is not already selected), and then click OK.
Click Details if you want to view the list of volumes in the disk.
Click Convert.
Click Yes when you are prompted to convert the disk, and then click OK



Good Luck! RAID (JMO) is not very reliable. Why not purchase bigger HD's
then use them in JBOD?

--
Computer/Software Tech.

Make it a great day!

Charles Richmond




"K" wrote:

I have 2 external eSATA drives which I have striped in Vista to make a large
volume.

If I reformat my PC can I add the volume back without losing data?

On Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:59:18 +0100, "K" wrote:

I have 2 external eSATA drives which I have striped in Vista to make a large
volume.

If I reformat my PC can I add the volume back without losing data?

As long as you load the Vista Raid driver for the eSATA interface
during Vista installation, the Raid drive should remain intact.

I have 2 external eSATA drives which I have striped in Vista to make a
large
volume.

If I reformat my PC can I add the volume back without losing data?

As long as you load the Vista Raid driver for the eSATA interface
during Vista installation, the Raid drive should remain intact.

Thank you.

Hi, K.

Well, we format a volume (a partition or a logical drive), not a PC. And
not even a whole physical disk drive, but only the partition(s) on that
drive. But you clarified later that you are really asking about
reformatting the System Partition.

If your RAID was created in hardware (by the motherboard or the BIOS on it),
then it won't even notice that a different HDD has been reformatted.

I've never used a software RAID, so I don't know how those operate. My
guess is that "andy" gave you the right answer.

My only experience with RAID is my first-and-still-current-after-18-months
RAID 1 mirror, which I use only as redundant storage for data. It uses my
3rd and 4th HDDs, identical 300 GB internal SATA II Seagates. My 1st and
2nd HDDs are also internal SATA II and not RAIDed. The RAID was created and
supported by code in the BIOS. I've used it with WinXP, Vista and now Win7
RC, usually x64 versions of each.

As a beta tester for Vista/Win7, I've often deleted and reformatted System
Partitions and Boot Volumes on the non-RAID drives. This has never caused a
problem with my RAID.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100

"K" wrote in message
...
I have 2 external eSATA drives which I have striped in Vista to make a
large volume.

If I reformat my PC can I add the volume back without losing data?