Motherboard with RAID, what happens when one drive fails?

[IsOs]

I'm considering these newer dual cpu motherboard with RAID controller. I was planning on using 2 identical harddrive and RAID 1 for fileserver operations. Which motherboard will support this configuration?

More important, can someone explain/tell me, on RAID 1 setup, if one drive fail, how would you recover? How would you know which drive failed?

 

[sitka]

Place 2 cents here

Software Raid 5 will make you look like a hero almost every time.

Lets see 5 X 60G 100ATA gives 180 Gig + 1 Spare sittin on the shelf

Servercase with a hot and stable P111

NT Variant

Under $3000. Impossible to beat and scales down to home PC, Or up if you go skuzzy

Not many do it because they aren't believers

 

[IsOs]

Software RAID 5, is that the name of the program? Who published/wrote this software?

What about those hardware IDE RAID built in the newer dual cpu motherboard like MSI 694D-AR, and ABIT VP6?

 

[sitka]

Software raid 0,1,5 is built into Win Dooz Server OS.
I don't believe many on board raid controllers support raid 5
Oh yea in Raid 1 (mirroring) when one drive fails break mirror, replace, reestablish mirror. Dead easy most of the time.
Each interface is a little different.

Mirroring is often considered a waste of space,
Raid 5 is better but the controllers are relatively expensive that's why I suggested software raid 5, it's free.

raid 0 10G+10G=20G killer fast
raid 1 10G+10G=10G often slower than a single drive
raid 5 10G+10G+10G=20G but what is real cool 10G+10G+10G+10G+10G=40G, good performance and safe

if I can find you a link to Raid explaination will do.

 

[IsOs]

Thanks, so Windows 2000 Server will have Software Raid 5 but not Windows 2000 Professional.

Links are highly appreciated.

Mahalo Nui Loa!

Hauoli Makahiki Hou!

 

[Moonbender]

AFAIK (or rather, according to what my father told me - I don't know heck about RAID) no IDE controller supports RAID 5. Only SCSI controllers do, and SCSI is, of course, very expensive. Software RAID 5 seems to be a finde solution, however I wonder if there is a performance hit due to the CPU doing all the work ... ?`

To answer the initial question - if one of the drives of a striping RAID is dead, the data is lost. There is probably a way to restore it partially, but it is not possible to restore it completely.

 

[rootaxs]

Adaptec has a RAID 0/1/5 IDE solution, unfortunately its performance isn't at par to their SCSI based offerings... in fact it fares worse than RAID controllers from IWill (got mine for $17) and Promise

 

[sitka]

Win dooz PRO supports Raid 0 and in my experience it is smokin fast. Realize that anything to speed up your drives has a large relative improvement on performance because as far as the rest of the computer is concerned it has to spend a lot of time waiting for disk reads and writes. Down side is your data is at least twice as likely to get lost. But that is why we all ran to Compusa today right. If you don't back it up, you can afford to loose it.

 

[jsbush]

Raid 5 IDE controller!

 

[sitka]

Micro Express $444

Wow, I had no idea that they were so cheap.
Hot Swappable, 6 independent channels on one of the models, too cool

 

[Rpower]

On the Adaptec site is some good understanding RAID docs. Also look at RAID 0/1 too.

 

[sitka]

now THIS is a raid artcle

 

[IsOs]

Thanks for the link.




<< Mirroring is often considered a waste of space, >>



The customer doesn't care about wasted space. They are more concern about data lost. Speed is not even an issue. They will also be doing regular backup but would like somekind of automatic backup for each file.

In Raid 1, if one disk failed, how would you go about replacing the failed disk? Also, while Disk 0 is dead, will the system use Disk 1 automatically. What about if disk 0 encountered FAT trouble, will the system automatically repair the problem using Disk 1?

I don't know RAID at all. My usual solution is have 2 identical drives in the system, do a disk backup using GHOST on a daily basis. If Disk 0 fails, change jumper setting or alter BIOS setting to boot from Disk 1. This scenario will loose any data on before the GHOSTing. Would RAID 1 provide a more simple solution?

Thanks for the informative responses.

 

[sitka]

The Raid 1 gives exact the same data on both disks. Each one is exactly the same.

For example if you had two exactly the same computers and two hardives, put both harddrives in one box and establish a mirror set, then break set and put one of the drives in the other computer they would be exactly the same. (Vendors and IT guys use to do this alot but there are better ways now). The reads and writes get completely duplicated to both drives so you get continuous full backup. Replacing the failed one in software is as described above, and is fully explained in Win Dooz Help. Each hardware solution has a procedure specific to the controller, some have bios interfaces, some GUI programs, whatever dosen't make a lot of difference as they all try to do the same thing. Which one is best is usually left up to reviews.

Yea it is failsafe, what happens exactly at the moment of failure using Win Dooz I can't remember. It may want you to break the mirrorset before you continue, might depend on the kind of failure (drive or controller channel) as well. Again each controller is different and each tries to sell their benefits and abilities.

Sorry if I'm giving you some stuff that dosen't apply but you mentioned File Server and I equate that to speed most of the time.

Lots of advantages over the Ghost use as you described it, except performance.

 

[IsOs]

Sitka,

You provided the information I was looking for. Thank you very much. I wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year.

I'll probably use RAID 1. I haven't really heard good things about the built in RAID controller on the newer MSI 694D or ABIT VP6 motheboards. I need to get more info on those simple hardware solutions. Otherwise, Windows 2000 Server might be the way to go. Is there a good third party software that do RAID 1 on Windows 2000 Professional or Windows ME?

Mahalo Nui Loa!
IsOs

 

[sitka]

Good question about the third party solution because I'd like to go with RAID 5 on Win Dooz Pro. I'm going to look around. (Rose Bowl is gettin in the way right now)
But do some research on those boards and best would be to spend an afternoon trying the config out &quot;before&quot; spending money. If that is impossible use COPERNIC with good definition key words to get someone else's experience. GOOGLE can really nail things down some times as well, don't forget to include the controller name like Promise etc.

With any luck we will get those d*mn flying cars this year. Happy KAY KAY UNO

 

[dougjnn]

Moonbender -- it USED to be true that no IDE controller supported RAID 5, but no longer. Promise has a card out now that does. Around $400.