Software and hardware RAID

[Guest]

We will use Hardware RAID Card to build up the mirror mode (RAID 1), so we
can restore my server if "ANY" one of hard drive failure.

But some friends just tell me that they cannot restore the server hard drive
if the "MASTER" hard drive was down by Windows' software RAID (Mirror). This
is the differenet of Software RAID and Hardware RAID, is it true ?

Mirror = Able to rebuild the mirror mode if one of harddrive failure ???


Can tell me more please ? Thanks !

 

[DL]

For Hardware raid:
If a single hd fails the mirror can be rebuilt, or the sys run from the
single drive.
However if the win installation becomes corrupt, as a result of a eg
intermittant controller fault then the entire mirror will be corrupt.
Many Hardware controlers cannot identify which hd, in the mirror, is
failing. A high end raid card controller can.
Not all manu.hd utilities can check drives that are installed on a raid
controller.
I cannot comment on software raid.

 

[Jeff Goldner [MS]]

you can usually recover the system if you use Software mirroring on your
boot drive. It typically requires removing the failed primary and moving the
secondary (for example, changing jumper settings, cables, drive slot, or
BIOS settings). Not as convenient as a mirror controlled by the hardware but
better than nothing.

The only time you will run into trouble is if there were undetected data
integrity problems on the secondary drive partition. This would be true for
hardware or software RAID.