# Can you RAID 1 external USB drives?



## claycad

I have two WD My Books 750GB. Is there anyway I can RAID 1 them over USB with just software?


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## myogesh85

No Sir 

You cannot create raid on external drives 
using any software but you should have a raid controller card on the motherboard or on the drive


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## vladimirb

External Driver are FAT32 formated and they can not be converted to dynamic disks...
So it is not possible because you must have two dynamic drives + they must be NTFS partitioned...


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## claycad

What do you mean by dynamic? I reformatted them both the NTFS when I bought them. Currently I have both of them partitioned as 1 500GB partition and one 250GB partition but would have no problem reformatting to one big 750GB partition.

I have RAID 1 on my mobo, but only have 4 SATA ports (1 used for C drive, one used for slave drive 2 used for optical drive) so I have none free.

I was thinking about buy an external enclosure that holds two drive and supports RAID 1, but am not sure how difficult it would be to crack the case open on the My Books and take the drives out. I don’t even know if My Books are SATA (they are the newer models, I’m guessing they are – do they even make 750GB IDE drives?)
Any experience in taking a My Book apart? I’m guessing doing so would void the warranty.


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## vladimirb

You have basic and dynamic disks...
Basic disks are for system and boot partition, external disks, notebook disks...
You can convert basic disk to dynamic without loosing data, but if you want to convert dynamic to basic you will loose all ur data...
U can have as much as 4 basic partitions, or 3 basic and one extended...
On extended u can create volumes...

Only on dynamic disks u can create RAID-0, RAID-1 or RAID-5 sets... so basically u need to convert basic disk to dynamic and then create RAID...
Go to disk management and try to convert external HDD from basic to dynamic...
'Convert to dynamic' option will be grayed... U can not convert...


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## claycad

okay, thanks vladimirb.

I've been just dragging and dropping new files from one drive to another in order to back up everything. I use it for video editing. Can anyone suggest a backup or sync program that could be programed to mirror my files automatically or at a certain time each day (preferably a free program, but I'd pay for one if it was good enough and easy to use)


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## wiseleo

I've created a RAID 10 out of 4 USB flash drives ones for an Exchange high availability demo running inside Vmware once.

That was purely to demonstrate what happens when a RAID fails. Beats carrying around a cage of 4 hard drives and a lot cheaper too.

Anything is possible. Just because an option is grayed, it doesn't mean that something like Diskpart can't override it. There is no technical reason for this to be not possible, but Microsoft will probably refuse to support it.

Anyway, Rsync should do the trick. It runs under Cygwin.


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## papo2

claycad said:


> okay, thanks vladimirb.
> 
> I've been just dragging and dropping new files from one drive to another in order to back up everything. I use it for video editing. Can anyone suggest a backup or sync program that could be programed to mirror my files automatically or at a certain time each day (preferably a free program, but I'd pay for one if it was good enough and easy to use)


Why don't you use a scheduled batch job as I do using xcopy?

Everyday, at at desired time, I have xcopy (DOS command) copy only my new/updated files to my second HD.


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## raptor_pa

Why not just use windows backup and schedule it?


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## chaska

You can use FlexRAID. The software is cool and allows to make a pool from multiple drives and keeps the original format and data. It works in Windows and Linux.


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## LMiller7

It is important to understand that no form of RAID is a substitute for doing backups. RAID (except for RAID 0) allows the system to continue operating in spite of a drive failure, allowing you to replace the failed drive at a more convenient time. This is important for server use where RAID is often used. But there are other causes for data loss other than drive failure. These include accidental or malicious file deletion, malware, etc. RAID offers no protection from these things.


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## Alt-rtt

I'd add that while a RAID may give some protection against a hardware failure of hard drives, it also adds additional causes for data loss. Fore example, a RAID controller may not flush its cache during an accidental computer restart or lock. Such an event causes a total mess in the file system of a disk which is very hard (and costly) to cure.

I sum all that up: it's feasible to create a RAID from external USB disks, but absolutely impractical.


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