my current pc has 2 discs running as a raid pair (where both are identical & simultaneously used by the system)

If I just take one out, what'll happen ?

If I then put the removed disc in another new build pc, what'll happen ?

The operating system is the windows7 beta test thingy. If I use the same copy in 2 machines …. what'll happen ?

taverymuch

If you remove one disk the first pc will work in degraded mode. Unless its the same chipset and raid controller in the second machine the system wont boot. If this is software raid goodluck. 🙂

yeh, it's software raid – chipset etc will be different

can't I just reset it to be "not raid anymore" in the bios ?

back up the whole drive to a spare new one first before experimenting, drives are cheap!

I don't have a spare new one – planning to use one of the raid ones

(all important data backed up in anticipation of disater)

yeh, it's software raid – chipset etc will be different

can't I just reset it to be "not raid anymore" in the bios ?

If the bios has a raid setting then its probably fake raid. On the first system if you turn raid off you may switch to a different HDD controller and you may get a 0x07B bluescreen on boot as the HDD controller switches from raid to non raid.

Honestly if you have to do this and dont want to just buy a new HDD then I would pull one of the drives from the first PC but leave it in raid mode (as its a raid 1 it will run in a degraded mode) and then format the removed HDD in the new PC during the install process and do a clean install. Then transfer any data you need over a network cable after.

Also check your backup is good before starting… 🙂

hmmmm, cheers

So there's no "penalty" for running degraded raid ?

If not, suppose I'll just pull out one of the drives from the existing pc & try it in the new machine. If it works, fine; if it fails I'll just reinstall from scratch

(Warning: 64-bit windows questions coming soon to a forum near you)

So there's no "penalty" for running degraded raid ?

For raid 1 no. For raid 5/6/50/60 etc yes as the controller needs to calculate the data from the parity on the other drives.

64-Bit is pretty much simples these days – I haven't had any issues with Vista 64 or Windows 7 64 bit. XP 64 bit was a fooking nightmare 😉

Thought I'd share with the class:

took one out of the existing m'board – worked fine, as degraded raid just as suggested

STuck the other one into a new build machine, totally different m'board & processor. AGain, works just fine (so far)

Good result.

I had a hardware raid controller die on me last week (adaptec PERC 2 controlling 5 scsi drives in riad 5). I was fairly pee'd off until I realised I had an unused server that had the same controller in it. Swapped the controllers and hey presto working server again 🙂