XP Pro can do SW RAID-0 and RAID-1, right?

[NTB]

I thought it could, but I was looking through XP's "help" documentation last night, and it said only server OSs could do any kind of Software RAID.

Nate

 

[Canterwood]

You can have striped volumes (Raid 0) on XP Pro, but mirrored (Raid 1) or Striping with Parity (Raid 5) are only available on server versions.
You also need to convert your disks to dynamic to do any kind of software raid or spanning etc. (Dynamic disks are not available on XP Home or laptop PC's)

Hardware Raid devices can be bought fairly cheaply these days, and don't involve the overhead of software raid.
Using harware Raid is also transparent to the OS, so you could use mirrored or striped drives and still use XP. (Home or Pro)

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: Canterwood
You can have striped volumes (Raid 0) on XP Pro, but mirrored (Raid 1) or Striping with Parity (Raid 5) are only available on server versions.
You also need to convert your disks to dynamic to do any kind of software raid or spanning etc. (Dynamic disks are not available on XP Home or laptop PC's)

Hardware Raid devices can be bought fairly cheaply these days, and don't involve the overhead of software raid.
Using harware Raid is also transparent to the OS, so you could use mirrored or striped drives and still use XP. (Home or Pro)

I knew most of that already; I just wanted to verify XP's SW RAID capabilities. I want to set up a simple little file server, basically to use as a storage closet for videos, RAW files from my Rebel XT, and other large stuff. Speed isn't too terribly important, but fault tolerance would be.

Can you reccomend any hardware controllers? the only real stipulation is that it wold have to be standard PCI compatible; I have an old AthlonXP 1600+ system to build this on.

Nate

 

[Canterwood]

Originally posted by: NTB
I knew most of that already; I just wanted to verify XP's SW RAID capabilities. I want to set up a simple little file server, basically to use as a storage closet for videos, RAW files from my Rebel XT, and other large stuff. Speed isn't too terribly important, but fault tolerance would be.

Can you reccomend any hardware controllers? the only real stipulation is that it wold have to be standard PCI compatible; I have an old AthlonXP 1600+ system to build this on.

Nate

You'll have to do your own research on hardware controllers.
There's loads out there which will do the job you want.
But I'm sure you knew that already.

 

[drag]

You could always use Linux if you want.

Something simple like Ubuntu or whatnot can handle all sorts of different ways of doing 'sw raid', including Raid 0, Raid 1, Raid 5.. and can handle spares, too, and technically hotswappable drives if your hardware/drivers supports it (no sata stuff is supported to do that yet in Linux).

And there is no limit to how many connections you can have or what services you can run and stuff like that.

Not that I have anything against using Windows as a file server, I'm sure it will work fine and if it's what your used to... But I feel that Linux for file servers is technically better if you can get past the awkward learning curve.

Aside from that a good hardware controller will easily set you back a couple hundred bucks. Cheapo (less then a hundred dollars) controllers use 'Bios' Raid, which is what to real raid controllers what software modems and winmodems are to real modems. A better, and much cheaper, thing to do is just get a big harddrive and a nice DVD burner and use DVD's for backup. RAID doesn't equal backups or data security..

There is to many things that can go wrong that will easily destroy even a hardware raid array.

For example just yesterday.. At work we have a windows server on a old IBM server machine. It had 10-drive RAID SCSI array of some impressive complexity. It's on a couple very expensive hardware raid array controllers and have nice easy-to-use trays and it's hotswappable the whole ten yards. The air conditioning unit failed in the computer room in the middle of the night.. before anybody got to it the tempurature rose to over 100 degrees and 5 drives on that system burned out and took the entire raid array with it. Huge amounts of data loss.

Raid is mostly for high-aviability... not so much for data integrety. For that you have backups.

Actually get a couple dvd burners...

 

[NTB]

You could always use Linux if you want.

Something simple like Ubuntu or whatnot can handle all sorts of different ways of doing 'sw raid', including Raid 0, Raid 1, Raid 5.. and can handle spares, too, and technically hotswappable drives if your hardware/drivers supports it (no sata stuff is supported to do that yet in Linux).

And there is no limit to how many connections you can have or what services you can run and stuff like that.

Not that I have anything against using Windows as a file server, I'm sure it will work fine and if it's what your used to... But I feel that Linux for file servers is technically better if you can get past the awkward learning curve.

I would have no problem doing that; I just wouldn't know where to start. Like you said, Windows is what I am familiar with.

Aside from that a good hardware controller will easily set you back a couple hundred bucks. Cheapo (less then a hundred dollars) controllers use 'Bios' Raid, which is what to real raid controllers what software modems and winmodems are to real modems. A better, and much cheaper, thing to do is just get a big harddrive and a nice DVD burner and use DVD's for backup. RAID doesn't equal backups or data security..

I know that. I already have a ton of stuff backed up to DVD; this would be just another copy, and easier access too (as opposed to digging through a pile of DVDs ) I already *have* a DVD burner in my main PC, and I was likely going to put one in the server box for backups, as well.

Nate

 

[TGS]

Originally posted by: drag

There is to many things that can go wrong that will easily destroy even a hardware raid array.

For example just yesterday.. At work we have a windows server on a old IBM server machine. It had 10-drive RAID SCSI array of some impressive complexity. It's on a couple very expensive hardware raid array controllers and have nice easy-to-use trays and it's hotswappable the whole ten yards. The air conditioning unit failed in the computer room in the middle of the night.. before anybody got to it the tempurature rose to over 100 degrees and 5 drives on that system burned out and took the entire raid array with it. Huge amounts of data loss.

Raid is mostly for high-aviability... not so much for data integrety. For that you have backups.

Actually get a couple dvd burners...

On a side note, has anyone worked with an idiot that would turn off two sets of air handlers, because he was getting cold? I walked into a data center and felt the hot gust of air pass over me, and heard a lot of beeping...


Text

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: TGS

Text

Interesting...thanks for the link

Nate

 

[Bozo]

Err Drag.......
Most servers are setup to do an orderly shutdown when they get too hot. This should happen long before the hard drives fail.

Bozo