Use XP Pro for disc mirroring?

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Paul

Hi,
Having just recovered from a failed C drive at home, I
want to put in a second hard drive & move onto a
mirroring system so if the C drive fails, the system will
still work and I can replace the faulty drive at my
leisure. Currently I use XP HE, is it best to upgrade to
XP Pro, which apparently does mirroring, or is there an
easier, cheaper solution?
Thanks for looking, it's appreciated.

Paul
 
Well, you have two options. First, does your computer support RAID 1?
See this link for more info on RAID:
http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

Second option, you can use XP Pro and make both drives dynamic and
mirror them. XP Home will not do dynamic drives and does not support
software RAID.

Your first option would be best if it is possible. The second option
will work, but you will lose system performance compared to RAID ;)
 
I have a Raid0 array, that I love (a pair of Serial ATA 120Gb drives) - has
is it possible to create a Raid 1 array of a Raid0 array (would it need 4
drives or 3 ?) ?
 
RAID 0 requires 2 drives. This is not fault tolerant. RAID 1 requires 2
drives and is fault tolerant. RAID 0+1 requires 4 drives. This is
fault tolerant and provides huge performance gains.

Your motherboard must support these different methods. RAID 0+1 is a
RAID 1 array of two RAID 0 Arrays. What motherboard do you have and is
it supported? I would suggest at least switching to RAID 1 if it is
supported for what you want to do. Unfortunately, these RAID
configurations (especially 0+1) cost a bit of money. You may even need
to buy a PCI RAID Card if your motherboard doesn't support it and you
really need it.
 
Hi,
Thanks for the reply. I have had a PCI ATA133 RAID
controller installed. Will that do the job and enable me
to use RAID 1? I presume I will need some software. I saw
this software from Techsoft which seemed a cheaper
solution that buying XP Pro. What do you think?

http://www.techsoftpl.com/backup/

Cheers

Paul
 
Got an "Intel" 865GBF(LK) using a Serial ATA card, from my last PC (rather
than using the ATA ports on the m/board).
 
A much cheaper and easier to manage solution would be to install a second
hard drive: really doesn't matter if SATA or not.

Then install Norton Ghost [or other imaging / recovery utility], make a
Ghost bootup Floppy.

Now one can launch Ghost inside Windows XP, get it to 'Image' the C Drive.
Ghost restarts the PC and in DOS mode will create the image file.

Now if ever you need to recover, then boot off Ghost Floppy and hten use
image file to restore to any hard drive or partition.

It takes half an hour to 1 hour for this process.

It's fast, it's reliable and doesn't use up sytem resources as would a full
mirroring raid system. Also this setup would be cheaper than 4 HDDs.
 
If you use the Ghost solution, either create an image of
your hard drive everyday or say goodbye to any data that
has changed since the previous image creation.
This solution is actually nothing like Disk Mirroring.
-----Original Message-----
A much cheaper and easier to manage solution would be to install a second
hard drive: really doesn't matter if SATA or not.

Then install Norton Ghost [or other imaging / recovery utility], make a
Ghost bootup Floppy.

Now one can launch Ghost inside Windows XP, get it to 'Image' the C Drive.
Ghost restarts the PC and in DOS mode will create the image file.

Now if ever you need to recover, then boot off Ghost Floppy and hten use
image file to restore to any hard drive or partition.

It takes half an hour to 1 hour for this process.

It's fast, it's reliable and doesn't use up sytem resources as would a full
mirroring raid system. Also this setup would be cheaper than 4 HDDs.

Rufio said:
Got an "Intel" 865GBF(LK) using a Serial ATA card, from my last PC (rather
than using the ATA ports on the m/board).


ATA 120Gb drives) -
has array (would it need
4
Click to expand...
.
Click to expand...
 
I've had this argument before -
No NT based workstation OS, including XP Pro supports any
fault tolerant software RAID. That means no mirroring or
striping with parity. You can only do RAID 0, which will
not provide fault tolerance.
You need a hardware RAID solution if you want to mirror a
partition.
 
Depends on the RAID Controller. Some only support RAID 0, some support
RAID 1. Check with the manual to see if RAID 1 is supported.

Since you are just learning how RAID works, I would suggest your read
through this entire article. It contains quite a bit of helpful
information and should answer any questions you might have much better
than I ever could:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=830&page=1
 
You are correct that absolutely NO NT WORKSTATIONS can do software RAID
1 or RAID 5. Anyone who argues with you needs to go back to school.
Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2003 Server do support software RAID 1
and RAID 5. Here is how to do it for anyone who is curious:

Windows 2000 Server:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;298155

Windows 2003 Server:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;323432
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;323434
 
Paul,

If your existing drive is PATA (standard IDE) then get an IDE RAID 1 capable
card - unless you want to change of course :)
If it is SATA, then get a SATA capable RAID card.

In US$ these should start at around $40.

If you go for a low cost unit, check it out by asking here first or doing a
google search.
You do not want to trust such a job to a dodgy card or one that will have
limited driver support.

Any that uses a Silicon Image controller should be OK.

Research thoroughly first.

Check out your motherboard first too - it may already support RAID already.
All motherboards with Intel 865 or 875 controllers should do SATA RAID 1.
(Many will say only SATA RAID 0 is supported, but if you check with the
manufacturer you should see that RAID 1 was added sometime last year). Some
include PATA RAID 1 as well, others (EG Promise) combined SATA and PATA
RAID...

The Intel RAID on 865 and 875 chipsets is good. There are many
implementations of RAID that are good, but always check before parting with
cash or committing. Make sure you check your [raid] bios version and raid
driver version before configuring.

Believe me, between good backups, a UPS, firewall, and RAID 1, sleep is
easier...

HTH
- Tim
 
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