Creating a mirrored volume, also known as RAID 1, in Windows is a method of data redundancy that duplicates data across two or more disks. This setup ensures data protection in case one of the drives fails. Windows provides built-in tools to create and manage mirrored volumes, specifically through the Disk Management utility and PowerShell. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up a mirrored volume using these tools.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure that you have:

1. Two or more disks of the same size that you want to use for mirroring.
2. Administrative privileges on your Windows machine.

Using Disk Management

1. Open Disk Management:

   • Press Win + R, type diskmgmt.msc, and press Enter to open Disk Management.

2. Initialize Disks:

   • If the disks are new, right-click on them and select "Initialize Disk." Choose the partition style (MBR or GPT).

3. Create a New Mirrored Volume:

   • Right-click on the unallocated space of one of the disks you want to use for the mirrored volume.
   • Select "New Mirrored Volume."
   • Follow the New Mirrored Volume Wizard:
     • Select the disks you want to include in the mirror and click "Add."
     • Assign a drive letter or path.
     • Format the volume with the desired file system (usually NTFS) and set a volume label.
     • Review your choices and click "Finish."

4. Complete the Setup:

   • The system will synchronize the data across the disks, which might take some time depending on the size of the disks.

Using PowerShell

1. Open PowerShell as Administrator:

   • Press Win + X and select "Windows PowerShell (Admin)."

2. List Available Disks:

   • Use the following command to list all available disks:

     Get-Disk

3. Initialize Disks (if necessary):

   • Initialize the disks if they are not already initialized:

     Initialize-Disk -Number 1,2

4. Create a Mirrored Volume:

   • Use the following command to create a mirrored volume:

     New-Volume -DiskNumber 1,2 -FriendlyName "MirrorVolume" -FileSystem NTFS -Size 100GB -ResiliencySettingName Mirror

5. Verify the Volume:

   • Confirm the creation of the mirrored volume by listing the volumes:

     Get-Volume

Considerations

• Data Safety: Ensure that any important data on the disks is backed up before creating a mirrored volume, as the process may involve formatting the disks.
• Performance: Mirroring can impact write performance since data is written to multiple disks simultaneously.
• Disk Size: All disks in the mirrored volume should ideally be of the same size to avoid wasting disk space.