RAID built into XP?

[enhanced08]

my I-Tech teacher said that windows has RAID built in but you can't get RAID 5. how do you do this?? he mentioned something about disk manager or something...

thanks!

[bozo]

To setup RAID requires additional HARDWARE ie. a RAID controller either on board or via a separate RAID controller card. Without this specific hardware, I highly doubt Windows can configure RAID.

[gtrasi]

Yes WindowsXP PRO has RAID support. When u install XP it asks for RAID drivers ..u have to press F6 and insert floppy of RAID driver(provided with the mobo whch supports RAID). The mobo ofcrse need RAID controller..most 875 chipset mobos have RAID controller.

This depends upon individual motherboard...also Asus has made RAID setup a bit easier..check their site for details.

[enhanced08]

no no, he said it was software RAID. its built in to XP from what he said.

[glc]

You can create a software RAID 0 with XP Pro using dynamic disks. I trust this even less than a hardware RAID 0.

[bozo]

Raid in general is NOT all is't cracked up to be on PC's, and I am talking about hardware RAID, as I tried it for 2 1/2 years....the theory seems good, until it goes aray...then it's a nightmare. Take that second hardrive & use it as a holding place for a a well regimented backup routine, & you will be far better off. Software RAID...I can only imanage the (deleted by moderator) with that!

[sataraid0]

Here: http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardw...eviews/1611/1/

is a good review and intro duction to what raid is all about.

Win xp may have a software setup for raid, however your mb chip has to support it I believe.

Also, raid0 is not faster than one drive setup as believed. Found that out for myself using 2 Raptor 10k drives in raid 0 config, in some cases found the 10k drive by themselves were faster. Think Maximupc ran an article about this last year

Anyway, just some pertinet info...hope it helps..................Sterling

[hoemee]

I used my raid setup(raid 0) for several years with Win98se and did not have any problems. Win XP does not like it - maybe just with my mobo. Had a lot of problems with it..keep getting bad image messages and had to keep reinstalling Winxp. Finally, I just went with a conventional, one hard drive setup and have not had any problems since.

hoemee

[glc]

your mb chip has to support it I believe.

Nope, has nothing to do with it. It uses the feature of dynamic disks to stripe a volume across more than one disk, it supports up to 32 disks.

[kevinf]

so its possible to combine 2 discs without a raid controller in xp. how do i do that, will i have to reformat

[glc]

To create a striped volume

Open Disk Management.
Right-click unallocated space on one of the dynamic disks where you want to create the striped volume, and then click Create Volume.
In the Create Volume wizard, click Next, click Striped volume, and then follow the instructions on your screen.
Notes

You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent you from completing this procedure.
To open Disk Management, click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel, double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management. In the console tree under Storage, click Disk Management.
You need at least two dynamic disks to create a striped volume. You can create a striped volume onto a maximum of 32 disks.
Striped volumes are not fault tolerant and cannot be extended or mirrored.

[kevinf]

whats a striped volume is it like i can combine 2 hard drive into a one letter drive, like 2 hard drives combined to make only one c drvie

[spyder003]

edit - nevermind

[thefultonhow]

Some info that might be useful: Last time I checked, you couldn't boot from dynamic disks, so you won't be able to use the software RAID as your boot drive.

How striping (RAID 0) works: In a normal hard drive setup, one drive has data blocks A, B, C, D, E, and F. In a striped volume, hard drive one has data blocks A, C and E, while hard drive two has data blocks B, D, and F. And yes, both drives are combined under one drive letter.

[enhanced08]

can you have 2 physical HDDs, one with 2 partitions on it and the other with only 1. 3 "Drives" in my computer. have one as the xp boot drive, set to 3GB partition or so and the remaining space on the drive and the other HDD in RAID 0. would that work or would you need 3 physical drives? one for xp and the other 2 for the RAID.

sorry if thats hard to understand.

Drive 1 Drive 2
2 partitions 1 partition
xp | RAID space RAID space

[Cricket]

You need physical hard drives for RAID, not logical drives.

I hope you don't really intent to install WinXP on only a 3GB partition. That's not enough room.

Cricket

[RJ]

my I-Tech teacher said that windows has RAID built in but you can't get RAID 5. how do you do this?? he mentioned something about disk manager or something...

You can also set up a software RAID 5 in Windows XP, you just need to modify a few files, so that you get the option to create a RAID 5.
Of course that is not as fast as a hardware RAID 5, though.

http://www20.tomshardware.com/storag...119/index.html

RJ

[enhanced08]

well the 3GB was just for numbers sake... if i need physical drives then i'll get a 6-10GB drive as my boot drive then give this XP RAID thing a try, maybe even try the RAID 5 idea.

[enhanced08]

i just went with the RAID0 and so far it seems to be working fine! since glc said he didn't trust it, i set it to back up the entire drive onto another 40GB HDD i have the OS on... so far so good!

thanks guys!