Why would anyone want to set up a RAID system at home? Maybe the user requires a speedy data transferring storage or an almost safe, fail¬proof data storage system. There might be others who may just want to know the difference of speeds and safety in such systems and want to try it out. As hard drives are getting cheaper by the month, data storage sales are rapidly increasing, leading to disposals of older hard drives (though they are relatively new, fast and have higher capacities).

So what can you do with older hard drives? Scrapping them or selling them at second-hand rates would yield little or nothing, which could be around 10 percent of its actual cost price. So why retire your old hard drives? Instead, you can use
them in a RAID array and get more out of your computer.

Almost all new motherboards today support hardware RAID. Some support only basic RAID 0 or 1 (striping or mirroring). while others support all types of RAID. Check your motherboard manual or the manufacturer's website if the board supports RAID and also check the types of arrays it can support.

In this workshop, we used one of our computers with an ASUS M2NPVMX motherboard and a couple of old 74 GB Raptor hard drives phased out from our
tests. We used them to show you how a RAID array using old SATA hard drives can be built in just a few minutes.

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Let's get started with building your RAID array. To demonstrate, we used two hard drives in RAID 0 to get double storage space while boosting the performance of the storage medium. To know more about the types of RAID arrays and what they do and how they work, refer to our article "RAID Em", an info graphic on RAID arrays in CHIP, December 2007.

STEP 1: Connect the required amount of hard drives after carefully studying the type of RAID arrays you will need for this workshop. Connect the drives by referring to the motherboard's manual. Once done, switch on the system and press the 'DEL' button to enter the BIOS setup. Some motherboards' BIOS may require pressing the [F2] or [Fl0J key. Navigate to the 'Advanced' tab, then choose the 'Onboard Device Configuration' and press [Enter]. On the next screen, choose the 'NVRAID configuration' and press [Enter].

STEP 2: Now you have entered a menu section where the RAID has to be enabled or disabled. Choose to enable RAID and then select the correct hard drives and the number of hard drives that you wish to join into one or more RAID arrays, and enable them respectively.

STEP 3: Enable the boot options to get the system to boot from the CD/DVD ROM drive in the 'Boot' menu. Save all settings and exit. The system should restart
and detect a new RAID array on your system and you will be able to see a new message on your screen prompting you
to enter the RAID setup menu. Press the required key that features on the screen to enter the RAID setup options.

STEP 4: In the menu 'RAID mode', chose the type of RAID you want to set up. From the 'Striping block' option choose 'Optimal' size. Then from the 'Free Disks' section, add the hard drives to the 'Array Disks' section using the arrow key. STEP S: Now that the RAID has been setup, choose the option to save and exit. The system may require an input to confirm the erasing ,of all the hard drive data from the array. Confirm, save and exit.

STEP 6: Once the menu exits, the system will now restart and try to boot from the CD/DVD. Insert your operating system CD/DVD and install it in the same fashion as you would normally do.

Your operating system will not even know about the RAID array running in the background and will treat the hard drives as one single large hard drive. The RAID hardware on the motherboard will take care of the necessary work it needs to do in a RAID system. Check the type of RAID setup you would need to install on your computer before installing your software. If your motherboard does not support RAID and you have some SATA hard drives you wish to use in RAID, you can avail of a PCI to SATA RAID controller for your computer. Note: Only SATA hard drives can be used to create a RAID setup here. You can create a software RAID array using Windows or Linux using both SATA and/or PATA hard drives .