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I recently added a new hard disk on my server and wanted to add it on my existing hard drive forming a RAID 1. I wanted to use Disk Management as it will be the easiest way to mirror the existing one. However, I cannot the continue the process because I am afraid it would reformat the existing disk and lose the data. Is that correct?

Thank you.

Faye
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Did you still have had a RAID 1 with the existing hdd or did the existing hdd runs only stand alone?

If the hdd was still in raid 1 you can use raid 1 rebuilding function. Zehn no data from existing hdd will lost. The new hdd will be fomated and synced with existing hdd.

Building a RAID 1 with stand alone hdd wirhout formating the hdd depends on your raid controller. Imo it is saver to backup your data on a third hdd, build the raid 1 and copy the data back.

Schnarchnase
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  • The existing is a stand alone HDD that's why I am afraid data will be lost. however, I have already scheduled a full backup of the drive so I can push through the mirroring this weekend without the worry of losing data. I will inform you of the result afterwards. Thank you. – Faye Jul 11 '17 at 01:54
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If you right-click your disk and choose the function "add a mirror", no data will be lost. I've done this many times on Windows7 / 2008R2 and up. It is also described on MS technet, though I didn't find the article right away just now.

The system will start synchronizing the disks, which takes hours to complete. It is safe to reboot (including power loss and restart) - all that happens is that the resync starts over at 0% instead of where it was before, so it has to complete once before you can rely on your mirror to hold your data fail-safe.

If you don't see the option "add a mirror", then you first need to convert your basic disk to dynamic disk. If you can't do this or have done it and still don't see the option, that's a totally different case from what the OP asks and should go in a different question.

Remember to check the sanity of your mirror each day ... the server will run fine with one failed disk and you might be vulnerable to total data loss for a long time without realizing it.

gonesoft
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  • Yes, yes. I can see "add a mirror" when I right click the disk. I just did not push through the process because I wanted to ensure no data will be lost after mirroring. Thank you very much for confirming, I will be trying this one this weekend and inform you of the result afterwards. – Faye Jul 11 '17 at 01:49