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RAID 1 with XP, hardware or software based?

L

legocitytruck

Senior member
I have a boot drive and two 1 TB drives on a machine running XP. Which is more reliable hardware or software based RAID 1? The ASUS motherboard has a RAID controller.
 
Am running XP/SP3 with a RAID1 data drive. My Asus mobo has a RAID controller, but one of the two connectors got damaged. So, I use a hardware RAID card, and it has been 100% solid for about 3 years. It also has a real eSATA port as well, and that is golden.
 
Both are software, the motherboard based one just has some firmware assistance to help with booting and such. The real work in the motherboard RAID happens in the driver.

However, you can't use MS' software RAID1 in XP without hacks because up until very recently they didn't let the workstation SKUs of Windows use any redundant levels of RAID. So you don't have much choice in the matter unless you want to risk breaking your system for very little gain.

Personally, I'm a fan of software RAID because of it's flexibility, performance, etc. But I'm a Linux user so I'm actually allowed to use any level of software RAID without any restrictions.
 
AFAIK, your Asus board RAID controller will do just fine with SATA RAID 1.
 
Are you saying that RAID control performed by the motherboard is software based and XP can't support it?
Click to expand...

Yes and no, respectively. If you're using the motherboard RAID then XP will use it just fine, but it's still technically software RAID even though there's a little bit of firmware support for setting it up and booting. What XP can't do is setup a mirror on it's own with the built-in software RAID, that's an artificial limitation placed by MS to get you to buy Windows Server for redundant RAID levels.
 
Since OP's question is specifically regarding RAID 1, then he has to manually set it up in XP. On the other hand, a hardware RAID card has its own BIOS and is set up and managed before XP even starts loading. IMHO it is thus very reliable and always good even though OS reinstalls may occur, etc. I personally prefer solutions independent of any OS.
 
When using the on board (motherboard) based raid controller is this set up through the BIOs? I imagine this would include selecting which SATA ports on the motherboard you would like to used in the array. Is there additional changes that have to be done in XP after this done?

Other than 2+ SATA2/3 ports in the RAID card and the proper PCI slot type, what else makes a good and reliable card? On Newegg there are a plethora of options and a massive price range to match.
 
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