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I have a relatively new Dell computer with an easy-to-open case and easily accessible drive bays, with a RAID 1 configuration (two 250 gb HDs with a rather important Windows XP Pro installation on them). I have some older spare HDs lying around, and I'm really interested in swapping out the two XP Pro HDs in favor of a single HD on which to install Linux, so that I can, for a time, use the machine as a dedicated Linux box, and then, when I'm done with that, put the Windows RAID disks back in. Would that work, or would I break my RAID array or loose my data?

RThurmont wrote:I have a relatively new Dell computer with an easy-to-open case and easily accessible drive bays, with a RAID 1 configuration (two 250 gb HDs with a rather important Windows XP Pro installation on them). I have some older spare HDs lying around, and I'm really interested in swapping out the two XP Pro HDs in favor of a single HD on which to install Linux, so that I can, for a time, use the machine as a dedicated Linux box, and then, when I'm done with that, put the Windows RAID disks back in. Would that work, or would I break my RAID array or loose my data?

Depends on the controller.

If the RAID controller stores the disk information, you might be in a spot of trubble if you do that.

Try dells support forums, they might have the answer.

Thanks, I'll do that.

If the RAID hardware doesn't do the raid functionality in hardware (like most "RAID" stuff that doesn't cost a few hundred), you're better off using the softraid that comes w/ the OS (not sure about Windows- I believe you use dynamic discs - I don't think you can put C:\ on it though - putting / on it works for Linux though.), since the HDDs would be transferrable between machines.