RAID questions

[Lollo]

Question1:

If one has an hardware RAID (mirroring) with 2 old hard disks, and one
breaks, can he exchange it with another of different
brand/model/capacity? Losing the extra space on the new hard disk is not
a problem, I just want to know if it's feasible or not. What if the new
hard disk uses a different number of head/sectors per cylinder?



Question2:

Is there a mainboard with a well-supported RAID chipset (integrated)
which is seen natively under Windows (2000, possibly) even during
win2000 installation, without need to install a third party driver?



Question3:

If for some reason (e.g. mistake) I change the IDE drivers under Windows
and I put "Standard PCI IDE" drivers instead of the ones of the RAID
chipset, will Windows2000 boot the next time or it will hang? If it
hangs, how can I set the driver back to the correct one?



Question3:

Which is a well-supported (I mean good drivers under Windows AND Linux,
possibly native) RAID PCI card?



Thanks in advance

 

[Alien Zord]

Question1:

If one has an hardware RAID (mirroring) with 2 old hard disks, and one
breaks, can he exchange it with another of different
brand/model/capacity? Losing the extra space on the new hard disk is not
a problem, I just want to know if it's feasible or not. What if the new
hard disk uses a different number of head/sectors per cylinder?



Question2:

Is there a mainboard with a well-supported RAID chipset (integrated)
which is seen natively under Windows (2000, possibly) even during
win2000 installation, without need to install a third party driver?



Question3:

If for some reason (e.g. mistake) I change the IDE drivers under Windows
and I put "Standard PCI IDE" drivers instead of the ones of the RAID
chipset, will Windows2000 boot the next time or it will hang? If it
hangs, how can I set the driver back to the correct one?



Question3:

Which is a well-supported (I mean good drivers under Windows AND Linux,
possibly native) RAID PCI card?

1) Yes
2) Not to my knowledge (and I build over 200 PCs a year) with any of current
controller chips. Even Adaptec's require a driver on a floppy
3) No, after loading the 32 bit drivers it will BSOD with the message
"Inaccessible boot drive". A possible solution is to boot from the CD into
repair console and copy the necessary driver into \winnt\system32\drivers
folder. I've done that with many drivers but don't remember doing it with a
RAID driver. Best is to keep a Ghost backup.

 

[Lollo]

Thanks for your reply

1) Yes

Aren't there any problem with drives which use the drives use a
different number of heads/sectors per cylinder?

Ok I understand: maybe with the LBA addressing and that's why it doesn't
matter, right?

2)....
3) No, after loading the 32 bit drivers it will BSOD with the message
"Inaccessible boot drive". A possible solution is to boot from the CD into
repair console and copy the necessary driver into \winnt\system32\drivers
folder. I've done that with many drivers but don't remember doing it with a
RAID driver.

I don't understand:

If I change driver by mistake from windows 2000, the driver files for
the RAID controller would STAY in \winnt\system32\drivers, wouldn't
they? I think only the references for the driver "in use" in the
registry would change, pointing to the "Standard PCI IDE" driver files
(also located there).

So I wouldn't need to copy the drivers to that directory. That would be
useless... am I wrong?

Best is to keep a Ghost backup.

Exactly the thing I wanted to avoid with the RAID :-(((



Also: anybody knows which RAID chipsets are supported under Linux?