how to get software raid0 in win2k pro?

[expresso]

I know the two 8.4 gig ata33 drives are pretty slow, but I was hoping to be able to get some performance increase for my second computer by 'striping' them.
I don't know how to go about doing this. The first disk has win2k pro installed with lot of files that almost fill it. (5gigs of stuff). The second one is now empty.

I went to mmc and clicked storage->disks manager.

This shows the list of drives. I have already converted both drives to dynamic. (I right click each drive, and converting to dynamic was the only choice other than deleting partition or whatever.

After reboot, I see that both disk are now dynamic. I right click each drive to find out that the only change I can make is on the second drive that is emty. This change allows me to create a create a volume, when I continue, simple volume is the only choice available! I see strip, and span and mirror but they are faded.

Some one tell me what I'm doing wrong.

 

[Thor86]

I've never tried using software raid for striping, so I can't really help with details. But here is a link with some good info to maybe help you out.

MSDN

 

[Smilin]

couple o things:

first you can't use raid 0 as your boot drive. You'll have to have a non-raid partition to boot from.

With the above in mind, go to a non boot partition in disk manager and highlight it. Then hold shift and select another partition on a different physical disk. Then the striping options and whatnot you mentioned will not be greyed out.

If in doubt, check the help files in disk administrator you will find them (and most other w2k helpfiles) to be pretty useful.


And by the way. Software striping and mirroring will perform almost identical to hardware raid. You only need specialized hardware if you go to raid 5.

 

[expresso]

Edit: I found this on the link:
Basic disks vs. dynamic disks
A basic disk is a physical disk that contains primary partitions, extended partitions, or logical drives. Basic disks may also contain spanned volumes (volume sets), mirrored volumes (mirror sets), striped volumes (stripe sets), and RAID-5 volumes (stripe sets with parity) created using Windows NT 4.0 or earlier. You should use basic disks if the computer also runs MS-DOS, Windows 98 or earlier, or Windows NT 4.0 or earlier because these operating systems can't access dynamic volumes.


I don't know if it means that I can leave the disks as basic disk and use them as raids, or does it mean that it only possible when created using Win NT 4.0 or earlier.
As I recall, the help in win2k said that only dynamic disk can be raided. So I check when i get home.


Thanks to the both of you for excellent help, I knew I somehow had to choose the 2 drives (or volume) I wanted to raid, but holding shift or cntrl didn't do anything for me.

I'll try it again when I get home.
I'll also read more on the link that was given.

Question:
When you say "first you can't use raid 0 as your boot drive. You'll have to have a non-raid partition to boot from"
Can I do that with just the two drives I have?
I read that the drive has to be converted to dynamic or else it can't be used to mirror or striped. I also read that a dynamic drive won't have any partitions, just dynamic volumes.
SO the problem is, how do I have a non-raid boot partition if partitions are not allowed in a dynamic disk?

The first drive contains all the files including win2kpro. Could I have two partitions on the first drive and i partition of the second drive, then make them dynamic, and then choose the second partiton of the first drive and the one partition on the second drive to be raided? Is that possible or must they be the same size.

 

[Woodchuck2000]

To create a striped set, you need two empty dynamic disks. In Windows XP/2K, you can use striping, mirroring and spanning only on dynamic disks. The reason you can't create a software raid array at the moment is that Windows is installed on one of the drives. When windows loads, it needs to access a number of files before it gets to loading the software RAID driver. If it's installed on a software raid drive, it won't be able to read those files because it won't have the driver installed. It's a vicious circle.

The only way you can create a raid set in this situation is to use a hardware controller. These can be bought very cheaply (about 15 pounds here in the UK.)

That said, there's almost no point. The performance increase probably won't be huge, and you run a rather massive risk of data loss since the disks are quite old. I would recommend that you stick with using separate disks.

 

[OpalFrost98GT]

You need Windows 2000 SERVER to set up raid!

Look here: Linky

 

[Woodchuck2000]

You need Windows 2000 SERVER to set up raid!

Only for setting up RAID 1/5.
RAID 0 is available in all Win2K Versions.

 

[GreatvvoIf]

Originally posted by: Smilin
couple o things:

first you can't use raid 0 as your boot drive. You'll have to have a non-raid partition to boot from.

With the above in mind, go to a non boot partition in disk manager and highlight it. Then hold shift and select another partition on a different physical disk. Then the striping options and whatnot you mentioned will not be greyed out.

Is there anyway to force win2k to put both the boot partition and the system partition on the RAID0 partition during setup if you know your software RAID has the ability to boot up due to the RAID bios handling the drivers part? Because I'm currently using the kx-333r and have two maxtor 80gigs in a RAID0 stripe setup. I know my raid setup will be able to boot by itself and I was able to do it previously somehow but can't seem to dupicate that success now when reinstalling win2k.

This is what happens when I try to install win2k pro on my raid0: I put the setup cd and boot from there into the blue win2k setup screen and press f6. The highpoint RAID drivers get loaded (using the latest version btw) and the setup can see everything fine. After installation finishes with all the mumbo jumbo I end up with the boot info on my older 13gig hd (that's also another hd I have connected but it's connected via regular ide; NOT RAID) and I system files and whatever else on the RAID0 partition. But as I said before, what I want is to have both the boot info and system files under the RAID0 so that I can boot straight off that. If I change the active partition from the 13gig to the raid then the next time I boot up, I get and error saying something like ntfl not available or disk boot failure etc.

Lastly, I also tried removing the 13 gig prior to installation and the result is the RAID drivers failing to load up properly after pressing f6. I get some kind of wierd error something along the lines of oem failure with path before it.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanx

 

[Smilin]

I'm in a rush but here's a quick clarification.

When I say you can't use raid 0 on your boot drive I meant IF you are using raid in software. If you have an actuall raid controller you can do anything you want.