Creating a RAID array on external USB/Firewire disks

[als_jordan]

I have done a lot of digging around on the web and cannot find a
deffinitive answer to this.

Can you RAID Disks which are connected via a USB or firewire external
enclosure.

I have a small home machine (running win2k pro, currently) which I want

to plug in 3 x USB2.0 (or firewire) external 250GB disks.

I would like to RAID5 these three disks, make it one volume. Does
anyone know if this is possible?

Thanks in advance.

Alan

 

[Guest]

There is a way to do this, but I don't know if you want to trust your data to
it. I actually did it under Windows 2003 server but once the volume was
formatted, I kept getting messages that a disk had gone offline. I finally
gave up and am evaluating other options. External SATA might work, but then
again might not. The only Microsoft supported RAID-5 interfaces are SCSI and
ATA and therefore SCSI would be the external solution. The only other
external option would be a firewire or USB hardware RAID solution. If you
want to try the "dicey" solution you need to first convert the firewire
volumes to dynamic. Do a search for Article ID 299598 on Microsoft's support
site. Then follow this link on Tom's Hardware -
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20041119/index.html
I really don't recommend it but good luck!