mirroring in XP

[maluckey]

I recently set up a native XP Pro software RAID 0 setup for gaming on my "toy" rig (after a few hits and missies) and it's great. The issues of data loss are no concern on that setup. I now want to set up a mirrored array, for data safety, on another fo my setups using XP Pro/corp., but haven't had any luck so far. RAID 0 is great, but RAID 5 or 0 + 1 is what I am looking for.

At the moment, I have only 1 SATA drive, so I am working with 3 drives, and can add one more (IDE only) if needed. Ihave a clean-slate to work with and was looking for tips, pointers, or actual knowlege of how-to.

 

[Nothinman]

You need a server edition of Windows to setup any sort of redundant RAID.

 

[maluckey]

Yyeah, that's true for most, but a few minutes with a Hex editor allows me more versatility if you know what I mean.

I'm no RAID guru (by anyones standards), and am having issues with Booting after creating the Array.

 

[MrChad]

Are you that concerned about hard drive failure that you need a redundant RAID?

 

[maluckey]

Yup!

I live in the boonies, where not only do we get brownouts, spikes, and noise in the power lines, but we get the same in the phone lines.

I have lost two battery back-ups, and three HDD in the last year. Sure, they were replaced, but it took weeks for the turnaround, and the data lost took even longer to rebuild.

On my gaming rig, I don't care what it catches or burns up, but on the work system, I have very time intensive work that is too large to store on CD/DVD (not to mention that DVD/CD R/W isn't a very safe media either, as UDF fails frequently compared to HDD), Removable HDD are susceptible as internal to voltage spikes and brownouts. I have NEVER lost more than one drive at any time, so was thinking tha the redundancy could surely be a help in this matter.

 

[Nothinman]

Yyeah, that's true for most, but a few minutes with a Hex editor allows me more versatility if you know what I mean.

Yea and any patch can undo your versatility.

 

[maluckey]

Point well taken MS has been good at closing loopholes when finding them....

Perhaps I should consider the hardware route for future proofing. What works now, could very well not work after the latest and greatest patch from MS.