Migrating a hardware RAID 1 array from linux to windows...

  • Thread starter Thread starter spodosaurus
  • Start date Start date
S

spodosaurus

Hi all,

While this topic isn't completely germaine to either of these
newsgroups, it does touch on them both. Also, I've found these groups to
be filled with people who are more knowledgeable than your average bear.

I have a RAID 1 mirror with 2 80GB seagate PATA drives on a Gigabyte GA-
7VRXPrev2 motherboard with a built in promise RAID controller. This
computer is currently running Fedora Core 2 and using Samba to share
these mirrored drives across the network for file storage, backups,
music, etc. The filesystem on these drives is ext3.

As my health is deteriorating, I want to move this array over to a
computer running windows. That way, if anything goes wrong after I pass
on, my wife won't have to try and learn how to use linux in order to
access our data. I have an ATA-66 PCI raid controller that can go into
the windows XP Home SP2 box.

I anticipate having to try to backup much of the 40GB on those 80GB
drives to DVD-R, which isn't a bad thing, so I can just recopy the files
back to the drives after they're repartitioned and reformatted on the
windows machine. However, what I'm uncertain of is which windows
compatible filesystem to use: FAT32 or NTFS. I like the security and
group and user permissions that Samba automatically sets once it's been
configured properly. I am under the impression that WinXP Home doesn't
offer anything near as nice for sharing files. So, my question is: if
you were having to do this, which filesystem would you choose and why?

Cheers,

Ari

--
spammage trappage: replace fishies_ with yahoo

I'm going to die rather sooner than I'd like. I tried to protect my
neighbours from crime, and became the victim of it. Complications in
hospital following this resulted in a serious illness. I now need a bone
marrow transplant. Many people around the world are waiting for a marrow
transplant, too. Please volunteer to be a marrow donor:
http://www.abmdr.org.au/
http://www.marrow.org/
 
spodosaurus said:
Hi all,

While this topic isn't completely germaine to either of these
newsgroups, it does touch on them both. Also, I've found these groups to
be filled with people who are more knowledgeable than your average bear.

I have a RAID 1 mirror with 2 80GB seagate PATA drives on a Gigabyte GA-
7VRXPrev2 motherboard with a built in promise RAID controller. This
computer is currently running Fedora Core 2 and using Samba to share
these mirrored drives across the network for file storage, backups,
music, etc. The filesystem on these drives is ext3.

As my health is deteriorating, I want to move this array over to a
computer running windows. That way, if anything goes wrong after I pass
on, my wife won't have to try and learn how to use linux in order to
access our data. I have an ATA-66 PCI raid controller that can go into
the windows XP Home SP2 box.

I anticipate having to try to backup much of the 40GB on those 80GB
drives to DVD-R, which isn't a bad thing, so I can just recopy the files
back to the drives after they're repartitioned and reformatted on the
windows machine. However, what I'm uncertain of is which windows
compatible filesystem to use: FAT32 or NTFS. I like the security and
group and user permissions that Samba automatically sets once it's been
configured properly. I am under the impression that WinXP Home doesn't
offer anything near as nice for sharing files. So, my question is: if
you were having to do this, which filesystem would you choose and why?
Click to expand...

NTFS has user and group permissions.
 
David said:
NTFS has user and group permissions.
Click to expand...

Say the primary hard drive dies on the XP Home box and I have the
filesystem on the RAID array as NTFS. When a new hard drive is put in
there and windows reinstalled, will there be toruble accessing the files
due to the way NTFS implements user and group permissions?


--
spammage trappage: replace fishies_ with yahoo

I'm going to die rather sooner than I'd like. I tried to protect my
neighbours from crime, and became the victim of it. Complications in
hospital following this resulted in a serious illness. I now need a bone
marrow transplant. Many people around the world are waiting for a marrow
transplant, too. Please volunteer to be a marrow donor:
http://www.abmdr.org.au/
http://www.marrow.org/
 
spodosaurus said:
Say the primary hard drive dies on the XP Home box and I have the
filesystem on the RAID array as NTFS. When a new hard drive is put in
there and windows reinstalled, will there be toruble accessing the files
due to the way NTFS implements user and group permissions?
Click to expand...

IF the discs are protected by RAID, there would be no need to re-install the
OS.

IF for some reason you did re-install the OS, then permission information
would get lost as when you create new users in the fresh install, they will
most likely have different SIDs to the users in the original install.
 
s said:
spodosaurus wrote:




IF the discs are protected by RAID, there would be no need to re-install the
OS.

IF for some reason you did re-install the OS, then permission information
would get lost as when you create new users in the fresh install, they will
most likely have different SIDs to the users in the original install.
Click to expand...


--
spammage trappage: replace fishies_ with yahoo

I'm going to die rather sooner than I'd like. I tried to protect my
neighbours from crime, and became the victim of it. Complications in
hospital following this resulted in a serious illness. I now need a bone
marrow transplant. Many people around the world are waiting for a marrow
transplant, too. Please volunteer to be a marrow donor:
http://www.abmdr.org.au/
http://www.marrow.org/
 
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