going from non raid to raid

[Ext User(Gary)]

I've got a system installed with WindowsXP running from
a single drive. I want to add another drive in a mirrored
raid combination to have the luxury of reliability.

The current drive is just installed as a non raid drive,
but the motherboard has Nforce 3 PATA and SATA raid. Can I
just add the second drive on one of the other PATA channels
without reinstalling anything? Once I enable raid in the
BIOS if I set up the array can I tell it to copy everything
from the installed drive and then have it create the mirror
on the new drive? If I go through this process will XP still
boot and work?

[Ext User(Jerry)]

My 2 cents worth, raid is a waste of good hardware. Having a good imaging
program such as Ghost or Acronis is much more efficient and reliable.

"Gary" <gwhisen@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
news:VmgGe.25905$X76.17519@tornado.texas.rr.com...
>
> I've got a system installed with WindowsXP running from
> a single drive. I want to add another drive in a mirrored
> raid combination to have the luxury of reliability.
>
> The current drive is just installed as a non raid drive,
> but the motherboard has Nforce 3 PATA and SATA raid. Can I
> just add the second drive on one of the other PATA channels
> without reinstalling anything? Once I enable raid in the
> BIOS if I set up the array can I tell it to copy everything
> from the installed drive and then have it create the mirror
> on the new drive? If I go through this process will XP still
> boot and work?