I have three 500GB hard drives that I would like to RAID to a 1TB hard drive so that if one of the drives goes down, then all my data will be OK. How do I do this through software? I also have a 150GB 10k raptor for my OS and stuff so there are four drives in total.
Doing this using software in Windows XP involves hacking a DLL to enable this feature, which is only enabled in Windows Server 2003. Doing it with hardware is a better approach, as it will keep the calculations from clogging the CPU and it doesn't require hacking anything.
what hardware do I need specifically and how much is this shit gonna cost me? You put the original idea in my head so all help will be appreciated
Hardware RAID5 cards are expensive though. The cheap RAID5 cards still use the main CPU for the XOR processing. The cards that come with an XOR engine cost significantly more.
NetCell RAID cards are not that expensive. Also, depending on how new your motherboard is, it may have a built-in RAID controller, though I can't say whether the onboard ones have their own processors or leech off the CPU. Either way, though, if you're going to do a RAID you might as well suck it up and spend the money. How much did those 3x 500MB drives cost? Do you want to cheap out and get shitty performance from those expensive drives, or do you want to do it right?
onboard RAID is uber-shitty unless you have a workstation/server board with a discrete solution. Get a good PCI-E card and call it a day.
Dude, I thought you were getting the Asus board that had it onboard? And as far as software raid goes, you don't need to hack anything if you're running XP Pro.
You start by converting the drives to dynamic discs in computer management. Once that's done, to make a simple mirrored volume you would just right click on one of the discs and select new volume > next > mirrored volume > next > click the disc that you want to make the mirror in the all available dynamic discs box > click add > and allocate the size of this drive > Then work through the wizard and windows will create the drive. You can make RAID 0 and 5 the same way, it's just a matter of picking alternate options in the new volume wizard...
You should probably try the Gigabyte website to see if they have a decent walkthrough for the RAID setup. That would be better than trying to do it in software.
marking this for later, that will save me tons of time...i'm tired of copying and pasting from drive to drive
The RAID5 controller on ASUS boards leech off the CPU. To use software RAID5 under XP you do have to hack it. Like you said, you have to hack a DLL.
See now, Doc, that software RAID configuration works great in Windows Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003, but I swear I've tried it on Windows 2000 and Windows XP to no avail, at least until I hacked some DLL or another. I (should) have a pre-hacked DLL on one of my computers, if I can find it I can send it to anyone who wants it. Be warned, though, that Windows DOES NOT run striped and mirrored drives efficiently. Standalone hardware RAID is still the best option; I recommend NetCell cards as an inexpensive, non-CPU-leeching solution.
You guys had to make me go and google, didn't you... Here's Microsoft using their customary 11ty billion words to say what I did in one paragraph. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308424
Simple, striped and spanned are the only available dynamic disk types availabe on an unhacked installation of Windows XP Professional.
You could probably copy all sorts of stuff out of context if you felt like it, but this is all you need to read: "Dynamic Disks and Volumes Dynamic disk storage supports volume-oriented disks. You create the following volume types only on dynamic disks: • New simple volumes. • Volumes that span multiple disks (spanned volumes and striped volumes). • Volumes that are fault-tolerant (mirrored volumes and RAID-5 volumes). Volumes on dynamic disks are called dynamic volumes. Dynamic disks can support up to 2,000 dynamic volumes per disk (although the recommended number of volumes is 32 or less per disk). Local access to dynamic volumes (and to the data that the dynamic volumes contain) is limited to Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP Professional-based computers. You cannot create dynamic volumes on (or access dynamic volumes from) a Windows XP Professional-based computer that has one or more of the following operating systems running: • Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition • Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 and earlier • Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition • Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition and earlier • MS-DOS You can create dynamic disks by using the Convert to Dynamic Disk command in Disk Management to convert a basic disk. "
That quote is hardly out of context when the title of the article is "Basic Storage Versus Dynamic Storage in Windows XP" Just because you can create a dynamic volume does not mean you can create a RAID1 or RAID5 set on a Windows 2000 or XP Professional machine. The fact remains that the only dynamic disk configurations available in Windows 2000 and XP Professional computers are simple, spanned, and striped volumes. Mirrored and RAID5 volumes are limited to Windows 2000 and 2003 Server operating systems.