What Win versions have software Mirror RAID?

[cjolley]

I'm pretty much sick of Abit's support of of the RAID controler on my BE-6II R2. The HighPoint bioses are greatly improved now, but Abit is not sending out updated bioses for my board and the HighPoint site biosed wont install because the the chip is integrated on the motherboard.

So, I'd like to move my mirror set to native software.
Where do I start?
I am on Win 2K Pro right now, but it doesn't appear to support software RAID.
What Win versions have software Mirror RAID?
2K?, XP?
Pro? Server?
I can get the OSs for free from friends at MS, so price is not a consideration. What would my best bet be?

Thanks,
Chuck

[GT98]

Might want to try here:

http://www.biosmods.com/

Oh and my experance with highpoint RAID controllers...they suck. I could never get XP to run right with my KG7-RAID. I got a new board with a Promise TX2 white box and my XP is as solid as Win2000 was on the KG7.

[Gurm]

*ahem*

It's because it's not called RAID.

In fact, what IDE RAID controllers do isn't _really_ RAID either.

What you are looking to do is just set up a software mirror.

Simple enough, do it in disk manager. There's some mucking about with simple vs. dynamic disks, but you'll work it out. The help file is actually not too bad on this topic.

- Gurm

[Wombat]

In fact, what IDE RAID controllers do isn't _really_ RAID either.

Care to elaborate?

[xortam]

I don't know why you don't call mirroring RAID Gurm. I don't know what the IDE RAID controllers are doing. Mirroring is providing the redundancy. Striping alone (RAID 0) isn't considered RAID.

I run RAID 0 in SW under W2K-AS because Mylex doesn't support my SCSI RAID controller under W2K.

[The PIT]

Win2k pro does software raid don't know about XP but I'm sure it's going to be there in the profesional version perhaps not the home though.

[Gurm]

RAID0 is not RAID, except in combination with other technologies (i.e. RAID0+1). The RAID advisory board says so. It's just striping. (*wink*)

RAID, by definition, includes redundancy, error checking (or parity) AND the capacity to rebuild the data.

Now, as to why the software used in Windows is NOT RAID...

RAID1, basic mirroring, also includes parallel reading. It isn't STRICTLY required to use the name, but true RAID1 will read from all the disks in the array at the same time, thus boosting your read performance tremendously - while write operations take the same amount of time as always. Some RAID1 controllers even allow for simultaneous small reads and writes (up to the cache size on the controller), mirroring once the read operation is completed... although that's more rare.

Additionally, the IDE controllers which have recently been called "RAID" are often doing nothing of the sort. It has been shown in a number of independent tests that software striping and/or mirroring is quite definitely the equal of some of these arrays (*cough* HIGHPOINT *cough*); and others, while providing the mirroring and/or striping functionality in hardware, take either an exorbitant amount of CPU overhead to do so, or fail to provide all of the requisite functionality.

Suffice it to say that there are relatively few _real_ RAID controllers out there that don't use SCSI - Promise makes a few now that do real RAID... but that's about it.

- Gurm

[The PIT]

I'm to pissed to think about this now. i f England lose tomorrow I'll read it then.

[Pace]

What kind of overhead is there in SW RAID? Don't know if it'll be worth it Chuck

[Dilitante1]

here's is some good reading:

http://www.pcmech.com/show/harddrive/296/

http://www.labmice.net/Windows2000/diskmgmt/RAID.htm

[Ali]

Im on a W2K Server machine now, and its running 2 9.1 gig SCSI drives as software mirror.

I did have W2K pro, and it DIDNT have software RAID. Cost me a bloody fortune, as for some reason the place I bought the OS from wouldnt take a return after I had opened the package.

My feeling is that is you are running software RAID, then speed isnt realy an issue. Im using it for the redundancy.

At home I have 2xStripe, and 2xMirror, using the Promise controller onboard my motherboard. Never had any trouble at all, even though Im using 4 IBM hard drives. The stripe is nice and fast, and thats where I keep my 98SE partition, and games/movies/junk. The mirror has my XP partition, and all my real work stuff that I dont want to loose on it (My Documents, Program Files, Visual Studio, Digital photos, Porn, etc).

Ali

[Marshmallowman]

win2k pro does does some software RAID stuff(and striping), I used to have a pair of 9 G scsis's as a Striped array(dynamic disk).

now using a two 40's on a hpt 370,

[Gurm]

Ali,

Are you SURE you can't mirror in Win2k Pro? I know you can stripe, and I'm pretty sure you can mirror as well... although I haven't done so in a while. It's been part of the OS since NT4 days.

- Gurm

[cjolley]

Originally posted by Gurm
Ali,

Are you SURE you can't mirror in Win2k Pro? I know you can stripe, and I'm pretty sure you can mirror as well... although I haven't done so in a while. It's been part of the OS since NT4 days.

- Gurm

I can't find it in disk managment.
Any ideas where I should look?
chuck

[CHHAS]

You have to make dynamic partitions to mirror.