defrag and chkdsk on raid1

[Alex Lee]

Hi -- thinking abouts setting up a raid 1 and have a couple of newbie
questions - wondering if someone might know the answer to.

My understanding is that windows will see only 1 hd when a raid1 is
setup properly however I am wondering:

1) how do I run a utility like chkdsk on the drive that is being
mirrored if windows only recognizes the source/primary hd?

2) similiar to above which is what happens when the drive windows
recognizes is being defragged -- will the mirror drive be doing the
same thing? my limitated knowledge on this tells no since
fragmentation, I think, is a semi-random process.

thanks in advance.

al

 

[Bob I]

As far as the operating system is concerned there IS only one hard
drive. The hardware RAID controller takes care to the "behind the
scenes" processing.

 

[Alex Lee]

Hi
thanks for your comment - I think I understand what you are tyring to
say but just to make sure that I understand this correctly -- lets say
I have 2 hard-drives A and B if A is not fragmented (ie 0%) and B is
(25% fragmented)

when xp does a defrag analysis it would see the hds as 1 big hd and
detect it as 25% fragmented and goes and does it job? same thing for
chkdsk?

thanks.
al

 

[Bob Willard]

Hi
thanks for your comment - I think I understand what you are tyring to
say but just to make sure that I understand this correctly -- lets say
I have 2 hard-drives A and B if A is not fragmented (ie 0%) and B is
(25% fragmented)

when xp does a defrag analysis it would see the hds as 1 big hd and
detect it as 25% fragmented and goes and does it job? same thing for
chkdsk?

thanks.
al

Once you combine HD-A and HD-B into a single raidset, Windows will no longer
see those individual HDs; it will only see the raidset as a single HD. So,
HD-A and HD-B cannot become fragmented; only the raidset -- an atomic
entity -- can become fragmented and defragmented.

 

[Bob I]

No, THERE is no "B", You have "A", and a duplicate of "A". The operating
system sees it as "A", the RAID hardware puts what ever the operating
system sends it, on to "A" and the duplicate of "A".