bill.boylan said:
I'm buying a new computer with Vista installed. One of the options I can
specify is a "DataSafe" hard drive which is really three hard drives: two
drives for the RAID 0 and one drive to backup the whole thing. I'm getting
cold feet on this. If anybody reading this has had RAID experience, please
give me some advice.
Bill Boylan
Hi Bill,
I tried Intel Matrix RAID which allows for RAID 0 and RAID 1 on only two
drives, unlike your configuration which is three drives. I am replying to
you because I just had one of those major catastrophic failures that you
hope to never have. One of the drives I ordered, a Maxtor 250GB SATA I was
supposed to be 'Open Box' but they sent a refurbished unit that was supposed
to be "Refurbished to Maxtor Specifications'. I doubt if whatever company
did the work actually refurbished it to Maxtor standards since it died on
Saturday, only eight months after I purchased it. But I digress.
I'm
telling you this as a bit of advice from the school of hard knocks.
It did give me an opportunity to discover what happens to a RAID array when
one drive fails. I had created two RAID volumes, a RAID 0 or striped volume
and a RAID 1 or mirrored volume. When the bad drive failed, The striped
volume worked for a while, but eventually failed after the first reboot.
This is normal and only my Vista OS and apps were on the striped volume and
were lost.
The good news is that after I reloaded Vista on my third non-RAID drive, I
could still see my more important data that I had stored on the mirrored
volume.
During POST, the RAID screen showed the RAID 0 volume as 'Failed' and the
RAID 1 volume as 'Degraded'. I have ordered an identical Maxtor drive that
I *should* be able to simply plug in, load Vista onto the RAID 0 volume,
reboot, start Vista, load the Intel Matrix Manager that came with the
motherboard and let it and Vista automatically rebuild the mirrored volume.
I will then have to go back and reload my apps, but I have done that so many
times now that I can almost do it in my sleep.
Note that creating the RAID volumes is destructive. Any data on the drives,
if any will be lost. So do the backup routine if you fall into this
category. Reconfiguring the RAID volumes may be destructive as well.
Caution should be used before reconfiguring your RAID array. When loading
Vista, you will need the proper 32 or 64 bit drivers. With Vista, these can
be on a floppy, CD, DVD, or even a flash drive (the last I'm not 100% sure
about).
Mixing different hard drives can lead to issues so it is best to get an
identical replacement drive if possible. It can certainly be a real
problem if your drive fails many years from now and no identical drive is
available.
This is my opinion and experience only, but I really like the speed offered
with the striped volume. Vista and my apps starts up very fast. I also
like the redundacy offered by the mirrored volume. Now I don't worry as
much about having to do backups although I still keep data on a third hard
disk and offloaded to DVD every now and then.
RAID requires a little bit of expertise to use properly so you should do
some homework before you decide to go for it. RAID isn't for everybody, but
it doesn't take a computer guru to implement either.
I'm sure I have left out something important, but someone else can add their
own experiences to mine. I am not qualified to call myself a RAID expert so
take this with the caveat that some of the information may not be 100%
correct.
For more information on my RAID configuration and instructions for setting
up in Vista see:
http://www.mindspring.com/~anorton1/Foxconn_975X7AB-8EKRS2H.html#RAID
Alan Norton
Reviews ABIT AN8 SLI, ECS P965T-A & Foxconn 975X7AB-8EKRS2H MBs
Guide to Choosing the Right Version Of Vista - Vista Confusion Article
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http://www.mindspring.com/~anorton1/