| To create a striped array you must first have at least two drives with a portion of 'unpartitioned space' free. The largest stripe you can create will be twice the size of the smallest unused space on either of the disks. If you have two disks, one with 500GB of unpartitioned space and one with 750GB, the largest striped array you could create would be 2 x 500GB = 1000GB, as the area of space used by the stripe on each disk must be the same.
The first step is to convert both disks from basic to dynamic disks within Windows. A dynamic disk is a disk that contains an additional database of other dynamic disks on the system. Dynamic disks can only be read by Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista, and the various Windows Server operating systems, and are required to create software RAID arrays within Windows.
To convert a disk from basic to dynamic, follow these steps:
1) Right click the grey box on the left that contains the disk names (disk 1, disk 2, etc.) and select 'convert to dynamic disk'.
2) From the next window you can check both blank drives and click 'ok' to convert them.
3) Once both disks are listed as dynamic, right click the 'unpartitioned space' of either drive and select 'new volume.'
4) In the 'select volume type' window, select 'striped.' Add all disks you wish to use, then decide on the amount of space on both disks you wish to use for the striped volume you are about to create. If you wish, you use only part of each disk for the stripe, leaving the rest free for other uses.
5) Choose a drive letter or folder to use, and the method of formatting, and you are done. The striped array will format and be ready for use. |