Soft RAID on WinXP Pro?

[YoYoBabyYo]

Is it possible to mirror two drives using the dynamic disk feature with WinXP Pro? When I tried to add a mirror, it was grayed out under disk management.

Another question I have is if a RAID card supports configuring a RAID setup under the card's bios, is it a hardware RAID?

Thanks.

 

[OdiN]

Yeah hardware RAID is done with a PCI card or onboard chip w/ a BIOS.

And for software RAID both disks need to be converted to dynamic disks - they can't be basic.

There is really no reason to use software RAID vs. hardware based RAID. There are lots more advantages to using hardware based.

 

[YoYoBabyYo]

Thanks OdiN. I converted both drives to dynamic disk, but mirror was still grayed out. I googled for an answer, but it seemed that other people had the same problem and were told that WinXP did not support mirror, but stripe and span.
I do not have a RAID card right now, but I am shopping for one that does hardware RAID 1, and all I really need is two ports.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: YoYoBabyYo
Thanks OdiN. I converted both drives to dynamic disk, but mirror was still grayed out. I googled for an answer, but it seemed that other people had the same problem and were told that WinXP did not support mirror, but stripe and span.
I do not have a RAID card right now, but I am shopping for one that does hardware RAID 1, and all I really need is two ports.

Do not use motherboard-integrated RAID. Around upgrade-time it becomes very, very difficult to ... upgrade ... once you've done that, without buying another RAID card.

 

[homestarmy]

I have a question related to what he is asking. So this SPAN option that you mention seems to be what I am looking for. I have an XP media center PC that has a 160 GB drive in it, and I want to add a second 160 GB drive that will be written to after the first drive is full, basically creating a virtual 320 GB drive.

Is SPAN the correct term for this? It can be done withing XP pro (which is what media center is built on), no?

Can any of you guys point me toward instructions? I am going to go search now with my new keyword - span.

 

[dclive]

Span is a horrible idea. It means if one of the disks dies, the entire volume dies.

I suggest getting the Winter Fun Pack 2004 from Microsoft, running TweakMCE that's in there, and having MCE use both drives for media playback. I do exactly that; it works well.

 

[homestarmy]

I have that and can do that, but what happens when media center fills up one of my hard drives and then starts deleting old tv shows? There isn't a way to tell it to start writing to the second drive, correct?

 

[homestarmy]

BTW, I don't know if I ever got back to you, it did turn out that the ATI TV Wonder card was the thing causing my problems. I took it out, replaced it with a different card, and no problems since. Thanks SOOOOOO MUCH for your help with that!!

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: homestarmy
I have that and can do that, but what happens when media center fills up one of my hard drives and then starts deleting old tv shows? There isn't a way to tell it to start writing to the second drive, correct?

Move the files to the second drive as they're recorded - in other words, once every few weeks/months, move your files. The TweakMCE program lets you play MCE files from that second location.

Or just set up a daily job in XP to do exactly that (move c:\location\to\TV\files\*.dvr-ms d:\recorded_tv)

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: homestarmy
BTW, I don't know if I ever got back to you, it did turn out that the ATI TV Wonder card was the thing causing my problems. I took it out, replaced it with a different card, and no problems since. Thanks SOOOOOO MUCH for your help with that!!

Don't remember that, but I'm glad it worked out well for you.

 

[Nothinman]

There is really no reason to use software RAID vs. hardware based RAID. There are lots more advantages to using hardware based.

Except for the fact that most 'hardware' RAID cards that aren't $200 or more are crap and do software RAID anyway, it's just hidden in the driver. And if the controller is on the motherboard you're screwed when you get a new motherboard. Software RAID is a lot more flexible (well, MS makes it less flexible in order to get you to pay for Windows Server but that's another story) and generally easier to work with. The performance will be pretty much the same for any RAID level unless you're box is extremely CPU limited.

 

[nweaver]

Most MoBo (at least it used to be) raid is driver based S/W raid (i.e. booted my live CD, found 2 drives with no usable partition).

I like the extra controllers, but the "raid" features are worthless, imho. I've been too lazy to fix it, and it bit me in the butt when my PSU died and I really needed a file off that PC. It's getting rebuilt (Ubuntu, most likely) soon.

 

[homestarmy]

So is there ANY advantage as far, as performance is concerned, to running RAID on the motherboard vs in Windows?

 

[nweaver]

Raid on the mobo can be setup prior to windows. I don't think you can do anything with the boot volume on windows (i.e. install windows, then span to another drive) I could be wrong though, I havn't played with XP disk stuff for a while.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: homestarmy
So is there ANY advantage as far, as performance is concerned, to running RAID on the motherboard vs in Windows?

You can RAID0 your \Windows disk.

(Hopefully the flawed logic of doing that won't escape the readers here.)

 

[JackMDS]

http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/

:sun:

 

[dclive]

What's the point of that? If you erase a file you need, it's erased on the mirror. If you change a file or corrupt it, it's corrupted on the mirror.

There's no substitution for backups...

 

[nweaver]

Dclive is correct, raid is NOT a backup. Doing backups to another array IS...but is not an ideal, long term solution. I believe the term for that is nearsite backup or something like that.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: dclive
What's the point of that? If you erase a file you need, it's erased on the mirror. If you change a file or corrupt it, it's corrupted on the mirror.

There's no substitution for backups...

Right, Mirroring is not a replacement for a Periodic Back up.

However, there is variety of scenarios that Mirroring is very useful.

Read the page that I linked too it lists few of them.

:sun:

 

[wasssup]

Is it at all possible to do software raid and actually boot off the raid array? I've got two 160GB SATA drives I've been trying to raid and although my sata chip supports it, I haven't been able to boot off it.

I may just end up using this software-based raid solution, but I want to be able to boot off the striped array...

 

[John]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q314343

NOTE: Dynamic disks are not supported on portable computers or on Windows XP Home Edition-based computers.

You cannot create mirrored volumes or RAID-5 volumes on Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP 64-Bit Edition-based computers. However, you can use a Windows XP Professional-based computer to create a mirrored or RAID-5 volume on remote computers that are running Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. You must have administrative privileges on the remote computer to do this.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: YoYoBabyYo
Thanks OdiN. I converted both drives to dynamic disk, but mirror was still grayed out. I googled for an answer, but it seemed that other people had the same problem and were told that WinXP did not support mirror, but stripe and span.
I do not have a RAID card right now, but I am shopping for one that does hardware RAID 1, and all I really need is two ports.

Do not use motherboard-integrated RAID. Around upgrade-time it becomes very, very difficult to ... upgrade ... once you've done that, without buying another RAID card.

Surely you can just break the mirror, move the drive over and recreate the mirror?

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: Phil

Originally posted by: dclive

Originally posted by: YoYoBabyYo
Thanks OdiN. I converted both drives to dynamic disk, but mirror was still grayed out. I googled for an answer, but it seemed that other people had the same problem and were told that WinXP did not support mirror, but stripe and span.
I do not have a RAID card right now, but I am shopping for one that does hardware RAID 1, and all I really need is two ports.

Do not use motherboard-integrated RAID. Around upgrade-time it becomes very, very difficult to ... upgrade ... once you've done that, without buying another RAID card.

Surely you can just break the mirror, move the drive over and recreate the mirror?

maybe, if they happen to be the same chipset, otherwise you are SOL.

 

[dclive]

That's not correct, nweaver.

You can break the mirror and then you'll be able to boot the single drive, true - I was thinking of RAID0/5 when I said that.

As long as the HAL hasn't changed and you put the right disk drives *prior to* moving from one motherboard to another, you'll be fine.

 

[tropic]

Kinda scanned the thread quickly, but since it seemed someone had a problem mirroring two dynamic disks for Windows software RAID1: Windows requires at least 8MB unpartitioned space on a dynamic disk be available if you wish to mirror it.