Install your new drive.

Go into Setup (F2) and enable the SATA port the drive is on.

Stay in Setup and go into the "SATA Operations", set "RAID ON"

Save and Exit Setup.

After your system reboots into your OS, bring up the Intel Matrix Storage Console from the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. Set the View to "Advance Mode".

Go into Actions and select "Create RAID Volume from existing hard drive". Follow the Wizard to select your drives for your RAID 1 volume and let it build the array.

Go watch a movie as the RAID 1 volume build will take approximately 1-2 hours.

 

The above will define the drives in your RAID 1 array and build the 2nd hard drive from the 1st drive. That's really all that's needed since your 2nd drive will be an exact copy (mirror) of your 1st drive, partitions and all!

 

Good Luck!

sorry for the numerous posts. You know what I just decided I would rather do, instead? I want to replace BOTH drives with higher capacity ones. Is there an easy way to move everything I have on my current 80GB drive to something larger or would I need to purchase Ghost in order to move everything from one drive to another one? If anyone has done this, I'd appreciate any information! I have an XPS 400 and I would like to know what HD's would work in the 250GB and 500GB capacities.

 

Thanks again!

Thanks for the instructions. I just realized something - will my new SATA drive come with a cable? I am still a newbie when it comes to SATA drives. I also noticed a discrepancy in the part # from what originally came in my XPS 400 system and what I just recently ordered.

 

From my system order, I got the following part #:

 

341-1055 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)

 

What I recently ordered, the part number was this:

 

341-2270 80GB SATA 3.0Gb/s and 8MB DataBurst Cache,RoHS Compliant Dell OptiPlex 320/740/745 GX620/GX520,Customer Install

 

I sure hope this 341-2270 will work with the 341-1055 already in my system. I sure wish I had checked that better before I placed my order. Dang it!

 

Thanks for your help in advance!

 

locoytravieso

.

If you purchased your drive though a retailer and it is one of the large manufacturers like WD, Maxtor, Segate and alike you will find the appropriate software inside the box to transport all the content of your drive to the new one.  Plus some cables, screws and manuals.

If you purchased the drive though Dell, you will have only the physical drive, no manuals, no cables, no instructions and no software

 

 

 

Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6600 (4MB L2 Cache,2.4GHz,1066 FSB)  

2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 DIMMs

Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic (D) Sound Card

256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro

22 inch E228WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel

Dual Optical Drives: 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable

TV Tuner  Digital/Analog + remote

HDD 2X   250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache- no Raid

Floppy and media reader

IEEE  1394

Windows Vista

 

I just installed both 500GB Western Digital Drives in my machine. I don't understand why I cannot get the 2nd drive to work but if I put my original drive in as SATA-0 it WILL see the single 500GB drive. If I put BOTH 500GB drives it only sees the first. I made sure both drives are working by trying each. Is there an additional setting I am somehow missing?

 

Thanks,

 

locoytravieso

I am using XP Pro x64 edition. I used Ghost to copy everything over from my old drive to the new 500GB one. I think the second 500GB drive is dead. When I enable the second port that drive doesn't come up with any information! I also tried putting the suspected bad drive in port 0 and it didn't recognize there, either.

I am so freaking frustrated! I installed the second 500GB drive, enabled SATA1 and then enabled RAID. Well I attempted to install Vista x64 edition on the newly created RAID and put in the floppy for the Intel Storage Matrix drivers. Vista could not recognize the drivers and I even tried BOTH the 82801 GR/GH ICh7R/DH for AHCI and RAID! I ended up just putting Windows XP x64 back onto my machine. Any ideas why I cannot get Vista x64 to load on this machine in RAID configuration? It seems to go fine if I disable RAID and install on a single drive just not these two drives in a RAID config.

 

Thanks!