RAID0 question

airfoil

Golden Member
Jan 17, 2001
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This may be a 'stupid' question so bear with me please :)

Say there are 2 SATA drives in a RAID0 configuration on an Intel ICHR. If the drives are removed and are switched when connected back; (i.e. Drive0 becomes drive1 & vice versa) would there be a problem?

TIA
 

MrControversial

Senior member
Jan 25, 2005
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Great question. I don't think so, but that all depends on the controller. The RAID controller sees RAID0 disks as one drive, but I don't know if the controller makes I/O requests based on SATA ports or disk ID's. For example, the controller could see the individual drives as Drive0 and Drive1 independent of whether or not the disks are in SATA0 or SATA1. But I don't know for sure. It seems as if this should be the case and it shouldn't matter where you plug them in.
 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
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Originally posted by: airfoil
This may be a 'stupid' question so bear with me please :)

Say there are 2 SATA drives in a RAID0 configuration on an Intel ICHR. If the drives are removed and are switched when connected back; (i.e. Drive0 becomes drive1 & vice versa) would there be a problem?

TIA

Depends on the controller. I know the Promise board I used in my HTPC said in the manual that you could swap the drives around and it would keep track of them (I suspect it either reads and stores the serial numbers of the drives, or writes a small hidden file on the disk that stores the array data). Others might not.
 

dhoytw

Banned
Dec 10, 2004
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Originally posted by: airfoil
This may be a 'stupid' question so bear with me please :)

Say there are 2 SATA drives in a RAID0 configuration on an Intel ICHR. If the drives are removed and are switched when connected back; (i.e. Drive0 becomes drive1 & vice versa) would there be a problem?

TIA


Ummmmm....it not gonna work no more. In most cases I don't think the controller is going to make a difference (definately not on the Intel ICHR).
 

lansalot

Senior member
Jan 25, 2005
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It *does* depend on the controller. If the controller stores its config in its own BIOS it may get shirty.

However, most wise controllers these days write a marker to the hard disk - and are smart enough to check that marker when booting, noticing any configuration changes as appropriate.

A typical example is the Dell Perc range - it will do that quite happily.

Also, switching around your dynamic disks around in xp/2k/2k3 etc will carry on regardless.