Question on running RAID in Windows XP

[Ghost_25inf]

Operating System System Model
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 (build 2600) MATSONIC MS8157E 1.0
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
2.00 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: MATSONIC MS8157E 1.0
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 07.00T 04/02/01
Drives Memory Modules c,d
121.13 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
105.09 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

_NEC DVD+RW ND-1100A [CD-ROM drive]
SONY CD-RW CRX140E [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

Maxtor 6E040L0 [Hard drive] (41.11 GB) -- drive 1, s/n E1FQPQ7E, rev NAR61590, SMART Status: Healthy
WDC WD800BB-00CAA1 [Hard drive] (80.03 GB) -- drive 0, s/n WD-WMA8E4969251, rev 17.07W17, SMART Status: Healthy 512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot '0' is Empty
Slot '1' has 512 MB
Slot '2' is Empty
Slot '3' is Empty
Local Drive Volumes

c: (on drive 0) 20.97 GB 13.16 GB free } Dynamic NTFS simple layout
f: (on drive 0) 20.97 GB 17.63 GB free } 80 Gig hard drive
g: (on drive 0) 15.73 GB 15.61 GB free }
h: (on drive 0) 22.35 GB 17.65 GB free }
i: (on drive 1) 41.11 GB 41.04 GB free 40 Gig hard drive Unformatted

Above is the stats on my computer. My problem is I cant run RAID. I have a seperate physical drive that i want to run the raid on. My hard drives are NTFS Dynamic, but when i right click my unused, unformatted drive and clcik new volume the options for Raid are grey and can not be choosen. What am I doing wrong?

[CXGJarrod]

c: (on drive 0) 20.97 GB 13.16 GB free } Dynamic NTFS simple layout
f: (on drive 0) 20.97 GB 17.63 GB free } 80 Gig hard drive
g: (on drive 0) 15.73 GB 15.61 GB free }
h: (on drive 0) 22.35 GB 17.65 GB free }
i: (on drive 1) 41.11 GB 41.04 GB free 40 Gig hard drive Unformatted

To use RAID at you have to have drives of the same size. You cannot just partition something into seperate drives an use it as a RAID drive. The benefit of RAID is that you use several drives to speed the write time to the drives. (Or give it fault tolerance or mirroring depending on the RAID level)

I guess it also has to do with what RAID setup you were trying to do.

Linky for RAID definition

[Ghost_25inf]

So u are sayin I cant use my I drive and mirror my C drive because my C drive is partitioned to only 20 gigs and that I will need a 80 gig drive to mirror that partition? I thought my mirror drive had to be as big or bigger than the drive i wanted to mirror no matter if their is a partition involved.

[CXGJarrod]

Originally posted here by Ghost_25inf
So u are sayin I cant use my I drive and mirror my C drive because my C drive is partitioned to only 20 gigs and that I will need a 80 gig drive to mirror that partition? I thought my mirror drive had to be as big or bigger than the drive i wanted to mirror no matter if their is a partition involved.

For mirroring you need two drives of the same size.