Software RAID

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gotbandwidth

Junior Member
Dec 15, 2004
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Anyone know of a software RAID solution for XP Pro? I know I could run 2003 or a Linux box, or even an inexpensive RAID card, I was just curious is there is any thing out there software wise?

Thanks
 
cleverhandle

cleverhandle

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2001
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IIRC, XP Pro can only do striping and spanning, not mirroring or any other kind of redundancy (like RAID5). I haven't heard of any other software solutions built on top of XP - it seems like such a thing would be both difficult to develop and have a very limited market. This page at Tom's details a hack to enable the server-version RAID options on XP, but I'd be leary of that sort of thing. I imagine it works well enough, but I'd be worried of downloading an update that overwrites the hacked files and leaves you with a hosed system. I would just get a cheap RAID card if all you want is mirroring. If you want RAID5, then you need to shell out some more money for a beefier card.
 
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drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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The 'hack' to make third party software raid work with XP is that many SATA controller manufacturers produce cards that claim to be RAID cards but are realy more accurately called 'BIOS-assisted' RAID or in Linux-land 'fakeraid'. Most 'SATA RAID' devices are like that.

Think 'winmodems'. These are controllers that strip out the proccessing bits and replace them with special drivers.

So these things are the third party software raid for Windows. They do require a special controller though. From windows-userland though they behave and act just like real hardware raid.
 
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gotbandwidth

Junior Member
Dec 15, 2004
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Cool....thanks for all of the input....guess I am just going to have to pick up an inexpensive card for a little redundancy...and yes I am doing backups to DVD so not relying on RAID for my backups. ;) Just wanted a little extra insurance between the backups.
 
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Madwand1

Diamond Member
Jan 23, 2006
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Windows RAID is a limited subset of functionality available from Veritas Enterprise -- "Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows" if I recall correctly. You can try this out for free. It adds tons of functionality (and potential complexity), including RAID 5 of course, and the possibility of greater performance due to features that you don't get in the "free" version bundled in Windows (e.g. control of stripe size).

In my environment and configuration, I wasn't impressed by the RAID 5 write performance, so didn't take the trial further and explore the sticker shock. YMMV.
 
postmortemIA

postmortemIA

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Jul 11, 2006
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Originally posted by: gotbandwidth
Cool....thanks for all of the input....guess I am just going to have to pick up an inexpensive card for a little redundancy...and yes I am doing backups to DVD so not relying on RAID for my backups. ;) Just wanted a little extra insurance between the backups.
Click to expand...


In windows XP it is done by going to disk management (diskmgmt.msc) and moving drives from 'simple' to 'dynamic'. Then you'll have mirroring (RAID1) available.

Also this is going to work only for one OS, I hope you don't have multiboot.
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

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Sep 14, 2001
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In windows XP it is done by going to disk management (diskmgmt.msc) and moving drives from 'simple' to 'dynamic'. Then you'll have mirroring (RAID1) available.
Click to expand...

Nope, XP Pro only allows spanning and RAID0. For RAID that does data redundancy you need a Server version of Windows.
 
RebateMonger

RebateMonger

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Dec 24, 2005
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We've had good luck with XP and three $50-ish Highpoint RocketRAID cards and IDE drives in RAID1 configuration. No, it's not software RAID, but it's easy to configure and pretty cheap.

And it'll boot from the Slave drive if the Master drive fails - something that Windows Server software RAID1 can't seem to do, at least for me. As hard as I tried, I couldn't get a Windows 2003 software RAID1 to boot when the Master drive failed. The motherboard BIOS doesn't seem to allow it. At least not my motherboard....
 
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spyordie007

Diamond Member
May 28, 2001
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Think 'winmodems'. These are controllers that strip out the proccessing bits and replace them with special drivers.
Click to expand...
I never thought to liken them to WinModems before but that's a great example of why >99% of the time I recommend using only good hardware RAID controllers for servers.
We've had good luck with XP and three $50-ish Highpoint RocketRAID cards and IDE drives in RAID1 configuration. No, it's not software RAID, but it's easy to configure and pretty cheap.
Click to expand...
I'd still call that software RAID (the system + driver, not the controller, does the work). Though you deal with the small business enviroment a whole lot more than I do so it probably makes sense for those clients.
 
RebateMonger

RebateMonger

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Dec 24, 2005
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Originally posted by: spyordie007
I'd still call that software RAID (the system + driver, not the controller, does the work). Though you deal with the small business enviroment a whole lot more than I do so it probably makes sense for those clients.
Click to expand...
I didn't mean to imply that this was "hardware RAID". I was referring to the OP's request for a pure software solution, which the HighPoint cards are not. Based upon my (admittedly limited) experimentation, I'd choose this low-cost hardware solution over Windows 2003 Server's software RAID 1. Besides the (apparent) inability to boot to a slave drive when the master drive has failed, Windows software RAID also requires you to use dynamic disks, which I'm not thrilled about.

And, no, I wouldn't necessarily recommend a $50 RAID card to a client for a critical need. But we've used them internally where we want high availability and don't want to spend any money. So far, so good....:)
 
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spyordie007

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May 28, 2001
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True, a $50 RocketRAID controller will give you more supported options, is going to be easier to recover from, and removes the requirement of dynamic disks.

This is a much better solution than using Window's Software RAID. :thumbsup:

I actually have one I use @ home in my network storage box w/ 4x250GB IDE drives in a RAID-5 array.
 
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drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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That sort of thing is good if you know what is going on.

For example with Linux software raid you can do most raid types and it's typically faster then hardware raid. It will even use less CPU usage. The downside is that with 'real' hardware raid all that parity and mirroring isn't happenning over your system's bus. You system's bus has limited bandwidth and you can easily saturate it with more then 4 or so disks.

In this situation I look at the entire PC like a very fancy disk controller. It's usefull for storage only and you would have to depend on other computers to manage the proccessing workloads. It's a sort of poor-man's SAN. (you have various options to use block-level protocols like AoE or iSCSI through emulated I/O. I think that even "iSCSI enterprise target' will offer good performance over a dedicated gigabit line with high quality switches and such)

If you have a system that you want real world workload that is stand alone then real hardware raid is pretty much a requirement.
 
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dclive

Elite Member
Oct 23, 2003
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Originally posted by: RebateMonger
And it'll boot from the Slave drive if the Master drive fails - something that Windows Server software RAID1 can't seem to do, at least for me. As hard as I tried, I couldn't get a Windows 2003 software RAID1 to boot when the Master drive failed. The motherboard BIOS doesn't seem to allow it. At least not my motherboard....
Click to expand...

(Speaking of 2003 RAID1)

Make a boot floppy with ntldr, ntdetect, boot.ini from the disk in question, formatted with a full format, and it will boot your RAID1 mirror.

Lots of other things you can do - recovery console's bootcfg, amongst others...
 
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Smilin

Diamond Member
Mar 4, 2002
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Originally posted by: dclive
Originally posted by: RebateMonger
And it'll boot from the Slave drive if the Master drive fails - something that Windows Server software RAID1 can't seem to do, at least for me. As hard as I tried, I couldn't get a Windows 2003 software RAID1 to boot when the Master drive failed. The motherboard BIOS doesn't seem to allow it. At least not my motherboard....
Click to expand...

(Speaking of 2003 RAID1)

Make a boot floppy with ntldr, ntdetect, boot.ini from the disk in question, formatted with a full format, and it will boot your RAID1 mirror.

Lots of other things you can do - recovery console's bootcfg, amongst others...
Click to expand...

Boot floppy is sure-fire.

You should however be able to boot from the second drive no problem. 2003 server will even auto-populate your boot.ini when you create a mirror.
 
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