By Levy Vargas
(January 13, 2006)

When you purchased your desktop, you were certain its hard drive was roomy enough to last. Astonishingly, that drive filled up in a flash, now home to an irreplaceable collection of data files, digital images, music, and home movies.

But don't fret. You can solve two conundrums--increasing your drive storage and safeguarding that precious data--at once by installing two new drives and a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) controller card.

Double up your data

Before you get started with this project, we recommend that you have the following:

Double up your data

RAID technology can improve the performance and reliability of your PC by making two or more hard drives work in tandem. You can configure RAID in several ways; we opted to create a RAID Level 1 array. Using two hard drives, RAID Level 1 mirrors the data on one drive to the other, so the data is recoverable should one drive fail.

RAID Level 1 has one major downside, however. To maintain two copies of your data simultaneously in real time, the scheme employs two drives of the same size, but you get the effective storage space of only one of them.

Our sample desktop contained an aging 60GB hard drive attached to the motherboard via an older parallel ATA (PATA) connection--the PC lacked newer serial ATA (SATA) ports. Typical of many desktop cases, the old drive was mounted in a metal drive cage designed to house a maximum of two hard drives.

To work around these limitations, we opted for the Adaptec Serial ATA II RAID 1420SA PCI card, which has four SATA ports and its own BIOS complete with some handy built-in utilities. The card also provides support for drive capacities larger than 137GB (a hurdle for many older systems) and comes with four SATA data cables.

We alleviated our data crunch by selecting two Maxtor Ultra16 300GB drive kits. This gave us a roomy 300GB of usable storage for our RAID array. We noted, however, that the Maxtor drives used newer 15-pin SATA power connectors, not the 4-pin Molex adapters used by older PC power supplies like ours. We had to purchase a separate Y cable with two SATA power connectors.

If you don't plan on adding more than two drives, consider Adaptec's 1210SA card, which costs less but has only two SATA ports.

Double up your data

With the PC turned off, disconnect the power cord and remove the case lid. For desktops with tower-style cases, turn the tower on its side for greater stability while you work. Next, find an available PCI slot, and, if necessary, remove the slot back plate. Attach two of the bundled SATA data cables to the first two ports on the RAID card. Then, gently but firmly, slide the card into the open PCI slot on the computer's motherboard. Press the card down and screw its bracket into place.

Locate the drive bay where you'll mount your first new hard drive, push the drive into place, and attach it securely to the bay with screws. Using the Y adapter, plug a power connector from the power supply into the back of the new hard drive. Then connect the first SATA cable to the drive, reconnect the PC's power cord, and turn on your PC.

The RAID card should appear on the power-on self-test (POST) screen. Once the computer boots, install the RAID card's drivers and management software from the Adaptec setup CD. Restart, then confirm successful installation by checking the Properties tab of the new hard drive under My Computer.

Use colored or marked SATA data cables to differentiate between them.

Double up your data

Now that you've installed one drive, you need to migrate the data from your old hard drive to the new one. To make things easy, we used Maxtor's MaxBlast software, included on the setup CD, to copy the entire drive--operating system and all. Close all open applications, insert the CD, and install the MaxBlast for Windows software. Once started, MaxBlast should detect the new SATA drive. When prompted, select "Add the drive as the new boot device" as the installation option, and the Setup Progress screen will load. The data-transfer process will take some time to complete, depending on the amount of data on the original drive. (In our case, it took about an hour for 8.36GB of data.)

After you complete the installation, shut down your PC and unplug both the computer power cord and the power connector from the old PATA drive. Reconnect main system power, turn on the PC, and make sure it boots up from your copy of Windows now residing on the new hard drive. Also check that you have access to all your files just as before.

Double up your data

1. Power down the PC and disconnect its AC cord again.
2. Remove the PATA drive by unplugging the IDE and power cables from it, then unscrewing the drive from the bay.
3. Next, to the back of the second Maxtor SATA drive, connect the SATA power cable (use the other lead from the Y adapter) and the remaining data cable from the RAID controller card.
4. Then mount the new hard drive with screws, close the case, and plug the power cord back in.
5. When you power up the system, the second Maxtor drive should be accessible from Windows.

Double up your data

With both new hard drives installed and working, it's time for the final step: transforming your two new drives into an array with a bootable RAID Level 1 configuration.

To begin, restart your computer and enter the RAID BIOS screen by hitting Ctrl+A when prompted during power-up. This will launch the Adaptec RAID-configuration utility. Select Create Array from the menu; you should see two drives listed in the screen's left-hand box. The grayed-out drive shown will be your boot drive. Press Esc to return to the main menu. Hit Configure Drives, then press the Ins key for both drives. All you have to do now is press Enter, then Y, to acknowledge the warning message.

The utility will transfer all the data on your new bootable hard drive over to the second drive and create the mirror. Expect this process to take about as long as it did to configure the first Maxtor drive. When it's done, reboot the machine. Under My Computer, if all went as planned, you'll see the array displayed as just one volume. In the background, however, every bit of your valuable data is being automatically copied across the two hard drives. Even if one drive dies, you'll still be good to go.