Software RAID (Server 2003)

[JRock]

Years back I had 2 60gb Western Digitals in a mirror (hardware) and when one of the drives died and the mirror was broken the 2nd drive was also unreadable. I now have 2 250gig Western Digitals and I will be using a software mirror. Should 1 drive go down what should I expect?

 

[MercenaryForHire]

To lose all your data?

Why aren't you using a hardware level solution? Never mind if the drives themselves stay alive - if the installed OS gets hosed from either physical defect on its drive or spyware/virus/trojan ownage, the dynamic disk will be locked to it and need recovery software to pull it off.

- M4H

 

[Hoober]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
To lose all your data?

Why aren't you using a hardware level solution? Never mind if the drives themselves stay alive - if the installed OS gets hosed from either physical defect on its drive or spyware/virus/trojan ownage, the dynamic disk will be locked to it and need recovery software to pull it off.

- M4H

Not necessarily. I've recovered data from a broken software mirror under Windows 2000. Slap the good drive in another computer, activate it using disk management, and away you go.

 

[JRock]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
To lose all your data?

Why aren't you using a hardware level solution? Never mind if the drives themselves stay alive - if the installed OS gets hosed from either physical defect on its drive or spyware/virus/trojan ownage, the dynamic disk will be locked to it and need recovery software to pull it off.

- M4H

Bootdrive is a Raptor the 2 250s are strictly storage... What do you recommend to and IDE Raid Solution?

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: JRock

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
To lose all your data?

Why aren't you using a hardware level solution? Never mind if the drives themselves stay alive - if the installed OS gets hosed from either physical defect on its drive or spyware/virus/trojan ownage, the dynamic disk will be locked to it and need recovery software to pull it off.

- M4H

Bootdrive is a Raptor the 2 250s are strictly storage... What do you recommend to and IDE Raid Solution?

Onboard if you're got it - otherwise there should be ATA133 compatible Promise cards available. The fact that they're 250GBs makes it so that you need the 48-bit LBA.

But Hoober's ability to get it to work might be confidence enough that it's fault-tolerant.

- M4H

 

[PlatinumGold]

Originally posted by: JRock
Years back I had 2 60gb Western Digitals in a mirror (hardware) and when one of the drives died and the mirror was broken the 2nd drive was also unreadable. I now have 2 250gig Western Digitals and I will be using a software mirror. Should 1 drive go down what should I expect?

if only 1 drive went bad, the other should have been readable. in fact, it should have continued to work without the 2nd drive until you replaced the second drive. that's the whole point of mirroring.

 

[Hoober]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: JRock

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
To lose all your data?

Why aren't you using a hardware level solution? Never mind if the drives themselves stay alive - if the installed OS gets hosed from either physical defect on its drive or spyware/virus/trojan ownage, the dynamic disk will be locked to it and need recovery software to pull it off.

- M4H

Bootdrive is a Raptor the 2 250s are strictly storage... What do you recommend to and IDE Raid Solution?

Onboard if you're got it - otherwise there should be ATA133 compatible Promise cards available. The fact that they're 250GBs makes it so that you need the 48-bit LBA.

But Hoober's ability to get it to work might be confidence enough that it's fault-tolerant.

- M4H

I 2003's mirroring ability at home for file storage. It's not going to be as fast, performance-wise, as a hardware solution, but if you're not concerned about that then it'll save you some money.

Fact is, even if you lose the RAID stripe, you should be able to still recover any data on the drive as long as the drive isn't physically corrupted or damaged. I wouldn't recommend this solution for a boot drive simply because if you lose the stripe or the OS has problems, then you're looking at a complete rebuild of the RAID set. It's really only redundant to a point. You'll need to go to RAID-5 if you want to sustain an OS during a drive failure.

Course if you lose your RAID stripe there, you're still hosed.

 

[blakeatwork]

So, are you mirroring or striping???

If you mirror, then if one goes down, replace it, rebuild, and you're back in business...

if you're striping... just be radey to kiss your data goodbye when you get some virsues or spyware..

Hardware controllers are generally the best for it, but really, unless it's on a PCI-X bus, there's not really any point to it.

 

[JRock]

Thank you everyone for your input. I will try both solutions and benchmark them both. If hardware is significantly better I will keep it if not Ill prob. just return it

 

[Hoober]

Originally posted by: JRock
Thank you everyone for your input. I will try both solutions and benchmark them both. If hardware is significantly better I will keep it if not Ill prob. just return it

You're going to have to be doing some major I/Os to see the benefits of a hardware solution. Otherwise I'd just save your money.