Drive Mirroring

[MC]

Is it possible to mirror 2 IDE drives using Adv. Server,
AND... if so, is there any drawback to using windows
software RAID for mirroring? Money is tight, so
purchasing a RAID controller card is not really an option.

 

[Olof Lagerkvist]

Is it possible to mirror 2 IDE drives using Adv. Server,
AND... if so, is there any drawback to using windows
software RAID for mirroring?

No noticeable differences as long as you have the two drives on
different IDE channels.

Money is tight, so
purchasing a RAID controller card is not really an option.

Advanced Server is much more expensive than an IDE RAID controller, so I
do not understand that part...

 

[Ryan Sokolowski [Microsoft]]

Yes - it is possible; I've configured this hundreds of times.

Yes - there are obvious performance limitations when using software-based
RAID. The OS becomes responsible for the additional overhead of maintaining
the volume as opposed to off-loading this to a dedicated hardware device to
oversee. There are also performance limitations when using IDE drives
versus SCSI drives, simply based on the access characteristics of each
standard.

--
Ryan Sokolowski
MCSE, CCNA, CCDA, BCFP
Microsoft Enterprise Engineering Center

"A troubleshooter's best tool is the Event Viewer and understanding the
events and messages contained therein."

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Lee]

Mirroring 2 ide drives via the OS, that is dynamic drives, has high overhead
since it is a software mirror. If you need that function and the
performance does not suffer that much then go for it but disk fault
tolerance should always be accomplished with a hardware solution.

Yes it's possible once you convert your disks to dynamic disk and then you
have the option to mirror them. As noted before they should be on different
IDE controllers.

Lee