How to setup raid 0

[hadap]

Hi,

 

I bought WesternDigital Caviar 200GB disk. I plan to buy another one.

It come with Promise FastTrack TX2 card which I believe raid capable.

I just don't want to be bother about backing up my valuable

photographs, how to setup raid 0. Do I need another ATA controler than

which comes with the disk?

 

I use Windows XP Pro and Dell Precision 320 workstation.

 

Any web links would be just fine.

 

 

Thanks

 

Sunil

[steve coburn]

Are you sure you want RAID 0? This isn't fault tolerant and is mainly used to improve read / write performance. <a href= http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html>http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html</a> has a bit more information about it. RAID 1 or 5 would be far more appropriate if you are worried about fault tolerance. However I do not believe that XP Pro supports mirroring, only the server versions. (Type in "mirror" in help and support, and then "add mirror" for full details). You may find it necessary to buy a dedicated hardware RAID solution.</br></br>Steve Coburn

[shaun westlake]

Sunil:

The TX2 is raid compatible. Info ,Manuals, drivers etc can be found on the promise web site (www.promise.com) at the link below. You may also need to update the bios to support the 200GB capacity of the western digital drive

 

You also want to set up a raid 1 or mirrored array where data is duplicated across two drives. A Raid 0 array stripes the data between two drives for a performance increase. I would strongly suggest that you look at an external method of backup such as tape, cd , dvd or an external hard drive (usb/firewire). Something where the physical backup medium can be removed or disconnected. Having a mirrored hard drive in your pc is of no use when a power surge comes along and "fries" everything inside the case. Worse yet, what would you do if the event of a fire? Your computer can be replaced, your pictures/data can't. If it is not worth backing up, it is not worth keeping.

 

http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=8&category=All&os=0

[scott_eaton]

Just to back-up what Steve said, RAID 0 is not fault tolerant and simply stripes data across multiple HD's to gain a 'theoretical' performance increase. It sounds like what you are asking is for RAID 1, which is physical disk mirroring to protect against HD failure.

 

I'm pretty sure this card supports both modes, but I only recommend RAID 1.

 

You can easily add the 200GB disk along with Promise card to your existing XP installation. XP will simply treat the new drive(s) as a new HD volume and you can proceed copying data to the new volume. If you use two 200GB drives in RAID 1, Windows XP will see both physical drives as one single 200GB drive.

 

There's really not much to it. You turn off your PC, install the card in any PC slot, and plug the drives into the card. When you boot your PC up you'll see any an option screen before XP loads that allows you to go into the Promise card and configure the card. I think it's CTRL-C, but not entirely sure since it's been awhile. You then boot into XP, install the card drivers, and after another re-boot XP will see the new drive.

 

If you want to save some hassles, install the Promise drivers on Windows XP *before* installing the card. This way XP will know what the heck it is when it boots up the first time.

 

You can also install XP on the actuall drive mirror, but this involves re-installing the entire operating system.

 

http://www.promise.com for their tech support

[brainbubba_motornapkins]

I've been running a RAID 0 on a Promise Fasttrak 66 (2x maxtor 30g 7200) for two years without a failure. However, I know that if there is any problem, all data is lost so I backup all important data. My RAID is partitioned (using partition magic), and I'm running W2K off one of the partitions, however the boot partition is on another disk, not part of the aid.

[chris_hawkins]

I've used raid 0 for 14 months with 120 GB Western Digital drives without any issues. You should backup your data no matter what system you use, so having raid 0 isn't any big deal. Regarding Scott's quotation marks around the word theoretical... the difference isn't theoretical. It is real. Opening and closing files is much faster with my raid drives than with my non raid drive. Also, my raid drives only contain data. The operating system is on a nonraid drive.

[kasigi]

Ok - if you need to increase the speed of your system or need a larger hard drive for PROGRAMS or TEMPORARY storage then RAID 0 is a terrific solution. I used it for a while and relished the massive and utterly speedy drive setup. However with a RAID 1 as mentioned many times above, each drive can potentially fail causing the probability to loose you data increase dramatically. If you use a RAID 0 system backup your files to something else frequently. A firewire hard drive is a good choice here (big AND fast). If you don't want to back-up your data then setup a RAID 1 or 5 as suggested above (RAID 1 is preferable).

[hadap]

Sorry for the confusion. I wonder why I typed raid 0 when I meant raid 1.

 

Thanks for the responses so far.

 

About the spike risk and fire risk, I really have not found a good/cheap solution in terms of tapes and required software. As a last resort I am going for this solution. I have put a good spike guard, that it. About fire, how many people keep their backups in another building? After all, photography is my hobby. Still thanks for reminding me and others for these risks.

[bernhard]

Although everyone should know this: RAID1 is no substitute for backups.

 

Sure RAID1 saves the day when one HD fails, but if a virus or toddler (not sure where the difference is) gains acces to your files, they both will happily mess up your data in ALL HDs on the RAID.

[steven_dusk1]

Sunil, have you thought about using the second drive in an external USB/firewire connected holder. There is software you can use to synchronise the two automatically (once a week perhaps), that way you have your offline 'mirror' that you can store in your desk drawer at work (or wherever) in case your home computer crashes/catches fire or is stolen...

[brainbubba_motornapkins]

"Sorry for the confusion. I wonder why I typed raid 0 when I meant raid 1"

 

If you want raid 0, you only need two disks. If you want raid 1, you will need 4. Ideally they should be identical disks -- mfg., model & capacity, so you should purchase them all at once, since models are rather frequently discontinued (replaced by newer ones).

[mike sisk]

RAID Level 0 - Striping. Date is written simultaneously to multiple drives in the array

which act as a single larger drive. Not really "RAID" (Redundant Array of Inexpensive

Drives) because it's not fault-tolerant. Requires 2 or more drives.

 

RAID Level 1 - Mirroring. Data written to one drive is duplicated on another providing

fault tolerance. Requires 2 drives.

 

RAID Level 5 - Independent data disks with distributed parity. Requires minimum of

three drives to implement. Capacity of the array is equal to the number of drives

minus 1 (assuming they're all of the same capacity).

 

RAID Level 0+1 - Mirrored Stripes. High performance; requires at least 4 drives.

Combines sets of RAID 0 arrays into RAID 1 arrays. If any drives fails it essentially

becomes a RAID 0 array.

 

RAID Level 10 - Striped Mirrors. Very high reliability with high performance; requires

at least 4 drives. Combines sets of RAID 1 arrays into RAID 0 stripes.

 

The general rule with IDE RAID is one disk controller per disk or use specially

constructed IDE RAID controllers (which are essentially one controller per disk).

Otherwise you risk a controller error corrupting the entire array.

[scott_eaton]

<I>I've used raid 0 for 14 months with 120 GB Western Digital drives without any issues. </i><P>So what.....I've had HP production servers sit for 3 years running UNIX just fine, and then have the RAID 5 SCSI array suddenly barf over night due to a single power glitch. Bye Bye server and data. 12 dead IBM 3L and 3H controllers replaced in a 6month period - and you want me to trust this Tawiwan IDE crap even more??? I don't trust my OS striped across RAID 5, and I'm sure not going to trust this meat-ball IDE junk with my OS striped with RAID 0. As soon as the driver hiccups or you get a GUID mismatch with Windows 2000 or XP during a service pack install you can kiss your machine 'bye-bye'. I don't have an issue with having a data volume that's striped, but putting your OS on a striped pair of drives is asking for a BSOD....no, it's BEGGING for a BSOD.<P><I>

 

You should backup your data no matter what system you use, so having raid 0 isn't any big deal.<P></I>I rarely back-up data, but use volume mirroring instead because unlike RAID 0, I'm not under a constant threat of losing all my data due to half a dozen reasons. I'd also ask you how you are going to restore your OS from back-up if your RAID 0 fails (assuming you have your OS striped).<P><i>

 

 

Regarding Scott's quotation marks around the word theoretical... <P></i>It IS theoretical, because the striping algorithms used by various controllers aren't the same. I have three production servers next to me running a flat mirror with another using a 2/3 mix across 5 drives, all of which are 15k SCSI drives. The mirrored drives are faster in write performance while the striped drives are faster in read. At another site using Compaq servers the scenario is the opposite. With your typical home PC and cheeseball IDE RAID card you should get at least some negligible write performance increase. Is it worth the hassle in my opinion? Nope....the increase in speed amounts to a 4x fold increase in the chance of critical failure. I'd rather do a RAID 1 and have some peace of mine, or use two different logical drives and at least let Photoshop have a independant drive for it's scratch file. I then set a large cluster size for the data drive which contributes even more.

[brainbubba_motornapkins]

"As soon as the driver hiccups or you get a GUID mismatch with Windows 2000 or XP during a service pack install you can kiss your machine 'bye-bye'. I don't have an issue with having a data volume that's striped, but putting your OS on a striped pair of drives is asking for a BSOD....no, it's BEGGING for a BSOD."

 

Slight exaggeration... assuming there is not an underlying hw problem, the worst you are looking at is a clean reinstall and the loss of any data which was not backed-up. If there is a hw problem (exceedingly rare in my experience), you buy a replacement part. I'm not begging for a BSOD, and I'm not even asking for one. They do happen occassionally, on my raid-installed OS and on single-drive installs as well. Sh*t happens, life goes on. I have a multi-boot, so if one goes down I can reboot into another and keep on truckin' until I get around to troubleshooting the problem. The only things that can seriously damage your system are overheating or power surge.