XP on Raid

  • Thread starter Thread starter Marcus Kemp
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Marcus Kemp

Can XP-pro work on a system using a RAID-0 configuration,
and does anyone have it running at the moment without any
problems on their system?
 
: Can XP-pro work on a system using a RAID-0 configuration,
: and does anyone have it running at the moment without any
: problems on their system?

XP does not have the ability to set up a raid per se, but it
will work with hardware based raid controllers. I am unsure
on software-raid. Another option people have used is a disc
volume spanning a dynamic disc set, similiar to raid-0.
This machine has a 3 disc set as the d-drive. The overhead
is less than 4gb of the 54gb available ( 3x18GB SCSI). No
issues related to this configuration yet
 
Marcus said:
Can XP-pro work on a system using a RAID-0 configuration,
and does anyone have it running at the moment without any
problems on their system?
Click to expand...

Yes it works fine. I have two systems, one with a Promise Fasttrak100 RAID
card and one with a Gigabyte 8KNXP motherboard with ITE RAID built in. Both
have Windows XP Pro installed. The only hassle I have had is installing the
OS on the RAID array initially (you have to press F6 at an early point in
the install and then provide RAID drivers on floppy disk when requested).
It's simple enough when you are familiar with it.

Once the OS is installed, it is all very transparent - just faster.

It is important to note that you are increasing the risk of data loss,
because if either of the drives goes down, the data becomes unreadable.
However, a decent backup regime should take care of that.

John.
 
I fully support the comments below - same experience with an Abit board. I
guess mine has been working for a year now. I have 2 pairs of drives each
pair RAID zero using the on board Highpoint controller and one conventional
IDE connection. Same experience that installing XP with the Raid as the boot
drive and the need to use F6 is a little tedious. Also a slight nevousness
about the reliability as the raid drives are too large to back up
regularily> Regards
 
Yes, and yes, although I only have one drive at this time. My Gigabyte
motherbaord doesn't seem to want to fully enable SATA unless Raid is also
on. But I'll tell ya: those Seagate 8-meg cache SATA drives SCREAM.

Randall Arnold
 
Can XP-pro work on a system using a RAID-0 configuration,
and does anyone have it running at the moment without any
problems on their system?
Click to expand...

Yes. I have always run XP on a Raid 0 array every since the RC2 release.

Doug
 
Thanks for the quick replies... The new question is: if
you did not hit F6 when prompted and continue the
installation... is there a way to install the Highpoint
raid drivers after... or do i need to format the Raid-0
config on the hds all over again?
 
Thanks for the quick replies... The new question is: if
you did not hit F6 when prompted and continue the
installation... is there a way to install the Highpoint
raid drivers after... or do i need to format the Raid-0
config on the hds all over again?
Click to expand...

If you have it up and running now with a different controller just
enable the highpoint then install the drivers from within XP. Then you
can use something like Ghost or Drive Image to copy the install from the
single drive to an array, then remove the single drive and the system
will boot up from the array. That is if you have enough hard drives to
do it that way. If not you could image the setup to CD's then set up the
array and restore the image to it that way.

If you need it here are instructions to install the drivers from in
WinXP.

Go to device Manager > SCSI and RAID Controllers > Highpoint Controller
Properties > Driver > Update Driver >
Click to expand...
Install from list or specific Location (Advanced) >
Don't search I will choose the driver > Have Disk >
Click the 'Browse' button >
Point it to the directory that contains the Highpoint drivers then
the '.inf' file in that directory. > click OK and accept.

Doug
 
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