Striped volumes in Windows 7

[fuzzymath10]

I've used software striped volumes in the past for casual server purposes. However this was ages ago with Server 2003.

I have 2 80GB X25-M G1s. Does Windows 7 (Pro or Ultimate) support striping them to a 160GB volume and booting from it? I know there are issues related to multiple volumes and booting, but what if it's just a straight up stripe across two physical drives (converted to dynamic disks)? I could always experiment but one of them has a Windows installation already so I'd rather know ahead of time so I don't reformat for nothing. Can this be done at the installation screen when you pop in the Windows 7 DVD?

BTW, my motherboard doesn't have hardware-based RAID (hence my question about software-based 😉)

 

[RebateMonger]

Windows software RAID is not capable of BOOTING to any striped disk. Without some boot assistance from a hardware RAID controller, the Windows boot code doesn't know how to read the striped data from multiple disks so it can boot the OS.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323433
"A striped volume cannot hold the system or boot partition of a Windows Server 2003-based system."

I have no experience with Linux software RAID, but this link says that Linux software RAID can't boot to a striped partition, either.

http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/raid-lvm.php

 

[corkyg]

The easy fix is to put in a RAID controller card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...er=BESTMATCH&Description=raid+card+controller

 

[fuzzymath10]

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately I have only PCI slots free which will seriously compromise reads. Additionally I dont' think SATA+RAID+PCI is easy to find for those bandwidth related reasons.

 

[GaryJohnson]

Additionally I dont' think SATA+RAID+PCI is easy to find for those bandwidth related reasons.

Newegg has 48 of them
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...e=1935%3A12552

It shouldn't have any significant impact on performance to run 2x7200rpm disks on a PCI raid controller. The disks probably have max transfer rates of around 70MB/s a piece and 32-bit 33MHz PCI has a transfer rate of 133MB/s. It ought to perform better than software raid or single disks.

 

[RebateMonger]

It shouldn't have any significant impact on performance to run 2x7200rpm disks on a PCI raid controller. The disks probably have max transfer rates of around 70MB/s a piece and 32-bit 33MHz PCI has a transfer rate of 133MB/s. It ought to perform better than software raid or single disks.

But he OP wants to boot from a RAID 0 array built of two SSDs. That array would have a pretty high read throughput, probably exceeding what a PCI RAID controller can handle.

It sounds like it's time for either a new motherboard or to substitute a PCI card (or something else) for whatever is is using up the available PCI-E slots.

Or, just get a cheap PCI RAID card and live with a maybe-bandwidth-limited PCI data path.

 

[GaryJohnson]

Sorry, I missed the SSD part.