Windows 7 removing raid1 and reinstalling programs/files

[randya]

Hi, I had a new computer assembled by a shop. I have I7 950 based system and has twin 1tb hardrives. I wanted to mirror the drives and files under windows, however the shop set up the drives in Raid1.(shop doesnt know what customer service is)

I transferred all my files onto the drive with window home premium etc before realizing it had been instlled with Raid bios setup. I want to remove the raid format (bios) and clear the drives and reinstall the drives under windows to use one a a backup drive. I have a external drive I can use to assist and later use a a second backup drive.

I understand once I clear the Raid formatting I will wipe all the info from the installed drives?

Can I make a backup on my external drive and reinstall all my prgrams and files from my external drive once I do this.

Also If I mirror windows 7 to my external drive can I reinstall this from my external drive to the internal drive or will it be set up as a raid format and not be of use?

Can someone assist please with the best solution and possible problems I could encounter?

 

[kemical]

Hi,
'The shop set the drives up in RAID 1?'

That is mirroring. See this link:

A RAID 1 creates an exact copy (or mirror) of a set of data on two or more disks. This is useful when read performance or reliability is more important than data storage capacity. Such an array can only be as big as the smallest member disk. A classic RAID 1 mirrored pair contains two disks (see diagram), which increases reliability geometrically over a single disk. Since each member contains a complete copy of the data, and can be addressed independently, ordinary wear-and-tear reliability is raised by the power of the number of self-contained copies.

Standard RAID levels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia