RAID Help

[justlearning]

im thinking of setting my comp up with some RAID action. My 300gb alternate drive is full of precious precious work data that im horrified to lose. Not a chance in **** of backing up. So i was thinking a RAID 1 setup might provide some piece of mind and safety. I've been checking out wiki and have yet to have any specifics CLEARLY pointed out. I know RAID 1 is a mirrored setup. What kind of performance cuts are there with setups like this???

It seems like lots of motherboards are using SATA drives as well, cutting back on the number EIDE connections. is it hard to setup raids through Sata?

Do i need to reinstall windows to get my "non-c:\ drive" setup as RAID 1?

 

[turtile]

The best back up is an external. RAID 1 is mainly used to keep machines running, not backing up info.

In a RAID 1, PSU failure, controller... can cause all damage to be lost.

 

[Law]

RAID 1 does do replication which is consider a backup method, it's just that RAID 0 doesn't. RAID 1 would be your cheapest solution for automatic replication. RAID 1 doesn't cut down on performance, it might actually add a little. However it cuts your HD by 1/2. So if you bought another 300Gb HD for your RAID 1 setup, it will just be a mirror of the first.

 

[justlearning]

OOOPs, didnt see your response LAW before i posted.

Thats exactly what i had planned. A RAID 1 setup that mirror the HD incase 1 of them craps out the other should still go on strong. Law... in regards to my original post

It seems like lots of motherboards are using SATA drives as well, cutting back on the number EIDE connections. is it hard to setup raids through Sata?

Do i need to reinstall windows to get my "non-c:\ drive" setup as RAID 1 in SATA?

 

[Law]

OOOPs, didnt see your response LAW before i posted.

Thats exactly what i had planned. A RAID 1 setup that mirror the HD incase 1 of them craps out the other should still go on strong. Law... in regards to my original post

It seems like lots of motherboards are using SATA drives as well, cutting back on the number EIDE connections. is it hard to setup raids through Sata?

Do i need to reinstall windows to get my "non-c:\ drive" setup as RAID 1 in SATA?

It's not any difference than EIDE, it's just that EIDE on standard board nowaday can't support more than 4 HD unless you add an extra PCI controller. Plus if you use the same controller for RAID 1 and that controller dies, your RAID 1 is gone. Some people have two controller for RAID 1 setup so that if one dies the other is still functioning in an EIDE setup.

SATA HD are easier to install plus the industry is moving towards it so I would pick SATA over EIDE if my motherboard supports it any day.

It should not be any harder. Your motherboard manual should instruct you on how to do that, it could be through software you install that came with your MB or pressing a button before the OS boots to configured RAID. I think Windows XP doesn't do software RAID 1, so you will need your motherboards software to do this. The manual should tell you which SATA port you need to use to get RAID 1 working. It's fairly easy.

You do not have to reinstall Windows.

 

[saltynay]

I don't think you can raid 1 the boot partition due to it leading to 2 copies of the OS and then errors because of this

 

[Law]

I don't think you can raid 1 the boot partition due to it leading to 2 copies of the OS and then errors because of this

It's perfectly fine to do that. I do hardware RAID 1 on my file server running XP Pro. Only downside about RAID is that it's just replication and not true backup like incrementals and differentials that you can go back to in time. Like if you need an old word document from last week you can't do that with RAID 1, what you do is aways mirror to the other drive. RAID is not a substitute for daily backup, you can still lose your data or overwrite them by accident.

I think you are referring to software RAID on XP Pro. I'm not to sure about that, never tried XP Pro RAID feature. I would stay away from software RAID IMO. Plus the hardware RAID are much faster.

 

[justlearning]

here's the mobo im running right now. Its a gigabyte

GIGABYTE GA-K8NSC-939 Overview

I believe it mentions 150 mb/s for the serial drives. I was wondering if this could support newer SATA 2 HDs(300 mb/s) and use them to their full capabilities. Or is the motherboard setup only for the earlier 150 mb/s hds.

 

[Law]

SATA 2 will run on it by setting a jumper on the hard drive, but only at the limitation of your motherboard which is 150 so that it isn't really running at the full potential. However it's still a good idea to buy SATA 2 just in case you need it for another high end system or future build.

 

[justlearning]

fantastic. just the information i needed. your the man Law. seeing as how i wanted to upgrade some memory perhaps i'll get a new mobo that supports my Athlon 64.