Can external USB or Firewire drives be RAID configured in Win2k?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Pierce
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Pierce

Can external USB or Firewire drives be RAID configured in Win2k?

For our home network, I want to implement a RAID 1 (hard disk
mirroring) solution for handeling the storage of ghost images and file
back-ups (family photos, videos, etc.) for my home computers (we have 3
XP pro client machines, and a Windows 2000 Advanced Server). And I want
the back-up system itself to be redundant.

Ideally, I'd like to connect an external Firewire drive enclosure (such
as the ones displayed here: http://www.cooldrives.com/firen.html) which
at a minumm will hold 2 large 250GB IDE drives of my choice in it. I
want to use one of the less expensive enclosures on that web page which
allow each drive to be seen indepenadntly by the OS as opposed to the
more expensive enclousres that have RAID built into them because the
cost of those solutions in addition to the purchase of the hard drives
would put me at about $900 - $1000. I want to spend less than $500 for
the drives and the enclosure.

So here's the question:
If these Firewire connected drives are seen individually by the OS, and
each have their own Windows assigned drive letter, can I make configure
them as dynamic and RAID1 (or even RAID5) if I wanted?

Any experience in this area that you could share would be much
appreciated.

Thank you.
 
Mirrored volumes are dynamic volumes. You cannot create extended partitions,
logical drives, or dynamic volumes on removable media devices.

More, mirrored volumes exist only on Windows 2000 server.

br,
Denis
 
OK, let me start this by saying that my comments are only that... comments.

I have configured CoolDrives 4Bay Oxford911 case with ATA drives. Be sure to
use version 3.7 of the firmware. My configuration was done with Server
2003EE. In order for the firewire converted drives to be optioned as dynamic,
you need to patch the registry...
Registry Settings
System Key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dmadmin\Parameters]
Value Name: EnableDynamicConversionFor1394
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = default, 1 = enabled)
Then reboot, let the system recognize your drives & reboot again. After that
insure that the drives in Device Manager are configured for quick removal
(disables write buffers). Bring up Diskmanager & you can now convert your
firewire drives to dynamic. At this point you can configure them as Spanned,
Raid1, 0 or 5. My configuration worked for 2 systems, but....

Both system Raids failed when I installed SP1RC1. Beware... I am now
researching reparing dynamic MBR to fix 1 of the Raids.

regards;
jbauer
 
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