WinXP Native Mirroring, or Hardware Mirroring for Data Storage Drives (2 x 1TB)

[Fun Guy]

As the subject line states, is there an disadvantage to mirroring my two Samsung 1TB HDDs via native XP (SP3) software RAID, such that I should pick up a cheap controller car to do it via hardware?

At the heart of this is the question, if one of the drives crashes, how easy/difficult is it to get the RAID array back up and running?

 

[theevilsharpie]

There is a disadvantage to software mirroring in Windows XP: it's not supported. You'll need a hardware RAID solution if you want mirroring in Windows XP.

The difficulty of recovering from a failed drive varies by controller.

 

[Fun Guy]

Well, I'm not really into $300+ for a RAID card, so will either of these Rosewill cards do what I want?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816132008

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816132014

 

[Nothinman]

Even onboard fakeRAID will do mirroring with acceptable performance, supposedly the Intel ICH stuff is pretty good too. I don't really have any experience with it though since I use Linux and it's software RAID is better and more flexible than most hardware RAID available.

 

[kmmatney]

I don't think you need a separate controller card. I recently bought an Athlon X4 640 (quad core) cpu from Microcenter, which came with a free motherboard. I didn't have any trouble setting up RAID 1 with Windows XP and 2 500GB HDs (I used a little bit of help online for the initial setup, but overall it was painless). Performance wasn't any different than using a single drive, as far as I could tell.

I'm almost certain that those cheap controller cards use "software" RAID, so you might as well use the controllers on your motherboard.

 

[Nothinman]

I don't think you need a separate controller card. I recently bought an Athlon X4 640 (quad core) cpu from Microcenter, which came with a free motherboard. I didn't have any trouble setting up RAID 1 with Windows XP and 2 500GB HDs (I used a little bit of help online for the initial setup, but overall it was painless).

I'm almost certain that those cheap controller cards are still using "software" RAID, so you might as well use the controllers on your motherboard.

I tend to lean the opposite way, since it's already software RAID why not just use the OS software RAID since it's undoubtedly more tested and flexible. But in this case it's not really an option since MS gimped their client OS software RAID.

 

[pcunite]

Use software raid unless you want to buy another motherboard or raid card that is identical to the one that fails in the future. Good luck with that. Windows 7 PRO is only $150 and worth it.