I'm trying to create a stripe array (raid 0) with via raid tool. I have one disk emptied and reformatted and the other has OS. When I choose create stripe array a warning message comes up that says "stripe disk 0 contains current OS!". Should I continue here or will that wipe out my OS? Or will it at that point Spread the data between both disks? Thanks in advance.

Don't use Raid. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

What he said ^^. But to answer your question you cannot create a RAID-0 array without destroying all the data on those drives. There are only a couple of reasons to use RAID-0 which are usually not relevant for most users and tehre are many, many reasons not to use RAID. Use at your own risk. Just be sure you understand all the issues involved. At the very least never use RAID-0 for your OS disk. Unless you do a backup every day to another drive you are putting all of your data at risk. Michael J

The way I mess with my computer my data is at risk every hour :) I wanted to see the performance difference in loading progs etc. But i've got everything running well right now so I think I'll take your advice. If I use mirror raid to create a backup of my HD can I then disconnect it and have a bootable exact copy of my OS? Thanks again for your advice. voltage

"I wanted to see the performance difference in loading progs etc" There are plenty of performance benchmarks out there that you could look at which would show the real-world performance is not worth the trouble. "If I use mirror raid to create a backup of my HD can I then disconnect it and have a bootable exact copy of my OS?" yes and no. Once you create the Raid-1 array, the system will always be looking for that 2nd disk. I suppose you could always run the system with failed redundancy (2nd disk missing), but when you reattached the disk to do another backup the process of rebuilding the array could take a while. For making a complete 1 to 1 backup you should be using a drive imaging program. You can then save the image to another drive or backup to DVD. Then if your drive crashes you could restore the iamge to the drive or to another drive if the original is dead. Michael J

Thanks Michael. I'll do that.

In addition the whole idea behind raid1 is that the shadow disk is as up-to-date as the primary. Disconnecting would not accomplish that. Give a person a fish you feed them for a day. Ask a person to internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.