RAID0 Disaster and VISTA re-installation

[BonzaiDuck]

I've read some recent posts here from some with positive experiences with VISTA 64, and I have to agree -- from my own experience. I became very comfortable with VISTA 64.

I had installed it on a new, separate system, planning a careful migration of my "serious" applications only after assuring myself that I would gain everything and lose nothing. In other words, I got my feet wet cautiously, using the VISTA "experimental" system exclusively for gaming and benchmark software.

The hard-disk subsystem was configured as RAID0 with two drives. I've set up some six or seven RAID0's for self and family, and only two have failed over a four-year period. I frankly didn't expect any disk failures under a very careful maintenance regimen. But I also postponed making a copy of the boot partition and storing the resulting disk in a safe place.

So after six months, one of the hard disks went south -- the whole array went south. I was flying my DC3, practicing landings on short runways in MS Fright Stimulator X, when one of the drives emitted that dread whining sound -- one of the loudest instances of the sound I'd ever heard, lasting a few minutes. I scheduled disk-check diagnostics and defragmented the array.

Thoughtlessly, I went back to Fright Stimulator. I put it on "Pause" and came back a few hours later. The machine had locked up, and rebooting made it apparent that the system wasn't recognizing the drive-gone-noisy.

So now, I want to buy a few new hard disks -- probably Western Digital Caviar Black 500's -- and take greater care with having a duplicate of the installation available, or creating a RAID5 that can be salvaged after a single drive failure.

WHAT ARE THE LIMITATIONS ON REINSTALLING VISTA WITH THESE HARDWARE CHANGES? WILL I FACE HURDLES IN REACTIVATIION?

I searched here briefly for answers to these questions, but found nothing specific. I'm sure the information is available in the MS Knowledge-base or in some forum post, but someone here must know.

Thanks.

 

[Billb2]

I kind of don't understand what you are asking.

If you just want to do a fresh install there will be no problems, other than all you data has gone to bit heaven.
There is the remote possibility (the "why?" is to complicated to explain) you will have to do a phone activation, but that won't be a problem either.

 

[RebateMonger]

Next time, if a drive starts doing something suspicious, do NOT run a disk diagnostics. Copy any important data elsewhere first, before doing ANYTHING else.

There's really no way to know when a hard drive will decide to fail. It can pretty much happen ar any time. And with RAID 0, it'll happen twice as often as with a single drive.

The safest way to back up drives is to "back them up", using suitable backup software. Imagine software is nice because you can restore the whole PC back to where it was in one step.

It sounds like you got your Licensing question answered on another Forum already.