Raid 1 setup question (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

Can you "retrofit" an existing PC setup (single hard drive) into a RAID 1 config (2 hard drives mirrored, connected to a RAID card)?

Or is it better to start from scratch (have both hard drives connected to an installed RAID card and then load the operating system, etc on the hard drives)?

The reason I ask is that I have everything but the RAID card, so just trying to find out if I can get started before the RAID card shows up.

 

[John_Berger]

You should be able to retrofit, but this depends on a LOT of factors:

Will your motherboard allow you to boot from the RAID card?

Will 2K/XP (which I'm assuming you're using) work properly with the RAID card?

Are both drives exactly the same in cylinders and heads?

Is the RAID card managed through the operating system or through some O/S-independent method, like a keypress or boot disk?

Since mirroring is nothing more than duplicating the existing hard drive, there shouldn't be any reasons why it would not work. If you have the ability, starting from scratch is almost always the best thing to do to guarantee that everything is mirrored properly. But as long as the different hardware and software components cooperate, it should not be necessary to do so.

 

[AllanN]

What RAID card or motherboard with RAID support are you useing. You should be able to non-distructivly setup a RAID 1, espically if the hard drives are an exact match.

Will 2K/XP (which I'm assuming you're using) work properly with the RAID card?

Win2k/XP should see the RAID 1 volume as a regular IDE volume if its hardware RAID

 

[Patrick Sun]

I've decided to order the card, RocketRaid133, and just wait for it before starting to load it. Both hard drives are the same size/make/model. Thanks for the info!

 

[JamesHl]

Why are you doing this, anyway? Tired of backups?

 

[AllanN]

Why are you doing this, anyway? Tired of backups?

Performance as well, now the data is being fed from two spinning hard drives, if the RAID card has cache memory you get two layers of cache and a larger total cache.

 

[Hanson]

Yes, but your write speeds and overall performance will suffer.

If you want real performance gains, go RAID0. RAID1 is for people who want fault tolerance, not performance.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Fault tolerance is the goal (reliability, up-time), not speed.

 

[Tekara]

I always like setting up a new install as everything will perform better and have less troubles.

but anyway, do make sure you back up your information before attempting the RAID array as most times raid cards will attach some extra information to the drive so that it recognizes the drive as being in an array.

depending on funds available you could always look into other raid array setups if you want performance and redundancy.

I'm sure you already know this, but I'm throwing it out for anyone who reads this thread. a RAID 1 array won't prevent file deletions, software causing corruption, etc. it really wiill only protect information from a hardrive failure. so unless your running mission critical data or are prone to having your hardrives crap out, there won't be much gain from a RAID 1 array.

 

[Patrick Sun]

And that's all I'm after, recovering from a hard drive failure.