Does WinME support RAID?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Willy Doer
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W

Willy Doer

I need to set up disk mirroring on a WinME computer. Does anyone know if
this will work? I assume that I will need a RAID controller and another
identical hard drive. Is there anything else I will need?

Any help is appreciated.


WD
 
willy@doer said:
I need to set up disk mirroring on a WinME computer. Does anyone know if
this will work? I assume that I will need a RAID controller and another
identical hard drive. Is there anything else I will need?

Any help is appreciated.


WD
Just a PCI controller card, plus the software that comes with it.
 
Willy Doer said:
I need to set up disk mirroring on a WinME computer. Does anyone know if
this will work? I assume that I will need a RAID controller and another
identical hard drive. Is there anything else I will need?

If your mainboard doesn't support RAID, you'd have to add a controller card
(probably cheaper to replace the mainboard though, so check it out).

To check for RAID support in WinME, I'd go the manufacturers sites and see
what drivers they have to offer and when they were last updated, compared to
when the last updates for WinXP.
 
Some OSs support software RAID, WinMe does not. What you are talking about is a real (hardware) RAID array. Such a RAID array will work with any OS because it is transparent to the OS, and is bootable (you can't boot from a software RAID array). You will need a RAID adapter, as others have said. The PC must support SCSI, as the RAID adapter will either be SCSI or emulate SCSI.
 
Some OSs support software RAID, WinMe does not. What you are talking about is a real (hardware) RAID array. Such a RAID array will work with any OS because it is transparent to the OS, and is bootable (you can't boot from a software RAID array). You will need a RAID adapter, as others have said. The PC must support SCSI, as the RAID adapter will either be SCSI or emulate SCSI.


Ahh, thanks. So then do the drives themselves need to be SCSI?


WD
 
I need to set up disk mirroring on a WinME computer. Does anyone know if
this will work?

yes, it will providing you have a driver for win9x (win95,
win98, 98se, me, etc).
I assume that I will need a RAID controller
yes

and another
identical hard drive.

no, you do not need an identical drive.
It has to have same interface (IDE, SATA, etc) as the
controller of course, and the mirror's size is the size of
the smaller of the two drives. Extra space on the larger
drive will be wasted, cannot be used for anything else. So,
two drives of nearly same size are the most cost-effective
implementation per storage space, but they don't have to be
same/identical drive.

Is there anything else I will need?

Sufficient cooling for a 2nd drive. Some people try to just
shove another drive in right next to their first drive when
first drive wasn't cooled very well to begin with. Look at
how well the case does/doesn't pull air through the HDD rack
and make necessary modifications if needed, else mount the
drive somewhere else like a 5 1/4 " bay with a passive
intake cover or fan assist.
 
Willy said:
Ahh, thanks. So then do the drives themselves need to be SCSI?

No. Although SCSI is best, a much less expensive IDE array will give good performance. An IDE RAID adapter emulates SCSI, i.e. it appears to the OS as SCSI, even though the drives themselves are IDE. SCSI emulation is used because of the ability to boot from a PCI device, and has good performance, mainly because it has bus mastering (SCSI's version of Direct Memory Access).
 
Why?

I could see setting up RAID 1 on Win2K or XP, but WinME?

This has to be a put on.


--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

Individualism is a political and social philosophy that emphasizes
individual liberty, belief in the primary importance of the individual
and in the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence. It
embraces opposition to authority and to all manner of controls over the
individual, especially when exercised by the state or society. It is
thus directly opposed to collectivism.
 
Sufficient cooling for a 2nd drive.

First he needs to put a decent OS in that machine.


--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

Individualism is a political and social philosophy that emphasizes
individual liberty, belief in the primary importance of the individual
and in the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence. It
embraces opposition to authority and to all manner of controls over the
individual, especially when exercised by the state or society. It is
thus directly opposed to collectivism.
 
First he needs to put a decent OS in that machine.

There's really no reason to do so if WinME suits the needs.

I prefer Win98SE *patched* over ME, but ME can be stripped
down to 98SE too.

Win2K or XP are better, but that does not detract from ME's
suitability for running RAID- if it's good enough for
"whatever" before raid, raid changes nothing in that regard.

In fact, if all he wanted was to set it up as a simple
fileserver wihtout any particular security/permissions,
using his already-licensed OS, it'd be little but a waste to
buy new OS. IIRC WinME "might" need some patch for an
uptime bug, though I don't recall the details on that.
 
& if the "leaks" are too much in ME just reboot it every hour.
Crap OS but that's only my opinion.
 
& if the "leaks" are too much in ME just reboot it every hour.

Not to worry - if you don't reboot it, it will reboot itself for you.
Crap OS but that's only my opinion.

It isn't even an OS - it's a kludged DOS task switcher.

I rate the credibility of posters based on their comments about WinME.
You rate high credibility.

The most telling thing I ever heard about it is, "WinME is enough to
make a grown man cry."

I think that says it all.

--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
--Benjamin Franklin
 
Not to worry - if you don't reboot it, it will reboot itself for you.


It isn't even an OS - it's a kludged DOS task switcher.

I rate the credibility of posters based on their comments about WinME.
You rate high credibility.

The most telling thing I ever heard about it is, "WinME is enough to
make a grown man cry."

I think that says it all.

Not so fast, what then accounts for people that DO have a ME
system running fine?

When one box runs good and other doesn't, we have to look at
differences between the two, not commonalities.

WinME does have all the limitations of Win9x and extra crap
causing problems too, but if the thing is rebooting or
crashing every hour that has nothing to do with ME, it's a
software or driver problem. It's not necessarily a
postitive thing to have a WinXP box with THAT much
instability but that can keep running while contiuing to
err. Either way the problem(s) need fixed.
 
WinME does have all the limitations of Win9x and extra crap
causing problems too, but if the thing is rebooting or
crashing every hour that has nothing to do with ME, it's a
software or driver problem. It's not necessarily a
postitive thing to have a WinXP box with THAT much
instability but that can keep running while contiuing to
err. Either way the problem(s) need fixed.

Is the instability caused by the driver or by ME?

IOW, if the same driver were installed in an NT machine, would it then
be stable?

I find no rational justification for running WinME on any machine
other than masochism.


--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
--Benjamin Franklin
 
Is the instability caused by the driver or by ME?

Must be the driver, since other ME boxes with different
driver aren't a problem.
IOW, if the same driver were installed in an NT machine, would it then
be stable?

It's not the same driver. NT uses different driver for
practically everything, with exception of a few like WDM
sound. If the NT driver weren't stable, device may not work
right and it might even cause that instability but it
wouldn't crash whole box (often, but it certainly does
happen, note the existance of 2k/xp bluescreen stop errors).

I find no rational justification for running WinME on any machine
other than masochism.

The justification is quite simple- If WinME runs OK (which
it can depending on the box and use) the theoretical gain in
buying a newer OS is slight if any. There are in fact
people running WinME fine right now. Win95 runs ok for some
people too, as does Win98. One upgrades when they "need"
to, and some don't.
 
The justification is quite simple- If WinME runs OK (which
it can depending on the box and use) the theoretical gain in
buying a newer OS is slight if any. There are in fact
people running WinME fine right now. Win95 runs ok for some
people too, as does Win98. One upgrades when they "need"
to, and some don't.

I can't fault that reasoning. If it works, don't fix it.

But if it doesn't work, then get rid of it and get something that does
work.


--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
--Benjamin Franklin
 
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