How to run RAID1 for the Vista boot drive - pls help me understand

[Dave]

I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development in
most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I understand
the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three Seagate
320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive so I can
regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the tray which is
part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and then insert the
previous drive that was offsite and want it to be brought up to date as a
bootable drive for the next time I want to swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the boot
drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in regards to
hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:" drive rather than the
boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of this type?
Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista? Any particularly
good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of the
mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted drive to be
updated to the current mirror status automatically or must you normally run
some utilitiy to do this? Different for hardware or software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS reinstalled
if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the nForce 430i chipset
and am wondering if they fixed this problem or must I plan to image the OS
back using Acronis and will that even work the same as if I was still using
just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original boot
drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure to boot the
backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Kerry Brown]

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups. You
would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another drive, and
recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive hardware controller
this process is not foolproof and it's common for it not to work. It's also
very common that the drive you removed isn't bootable. A better solution is
to use a disk imaging program and clone the hard drive to a second drive
then remove the second drive. When you want another backup put in another
drive and create another clone. This can be done with USB, firewire or some
eSATA drives if you need to do the swapping without downing the computer.

 

[Dave]

If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is some
merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the first place.
Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap offsite
disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the booted or the
backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups. You
would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another drive,
and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive hardware
controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for it not to
work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't bootable. A
better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone the hard drive
to a second drive then remove the second drive. When you want another
backup put in another drive and create another clone. This can be done
with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need to do the swapping
without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development in
most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I understand
the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive so
I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the tray
which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and then
insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be brought up
to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the boot
drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in regards
to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:" drive rather
than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of this
type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista? Any
particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of the
mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted drive to
be updated to the current mirror status automatically or must you
normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for hardware or software
setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the nForce
430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or must I plan
to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even work the same as if
I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original boot
drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure to boot
the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Kerry Brown]

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer keeps
working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works very well
at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed to be a backup
system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is some
merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the first
place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap offsite
disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the booted or the
backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups. You
would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another drive,
and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive hardware
controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for it not to
work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't bootable. A
better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone the hard drive
to a second drive then remove the second drive. When you want another
backup put in another drive and create another clone. This can be done
with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need to do the swapping
without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development in
most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I understand
the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive so
I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the tray
which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and then
insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be brought up
to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in
regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:" drive
rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of this
type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista? Any
particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of the
mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted drive
to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or must you
normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for hardware or
software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the nForce
430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or must I plan
to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even work the same as
if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure to
boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Dustin Harper]

It does work, not designed to be that way, but it works. I recently had a
RAID controller go bad, replaced it and a bad HD (power problem). Replaced
one of the two drives, rebuilt the array and back up and running (scary few
days with just one HD). We had backups, but with the RAID array, it kept the
business up and running with little down time.

Not the easiest or correct way to use RAID, but it can save your data in
case of HD failure.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer keeps
working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works very well
at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed to be a
backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is some
merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the first
place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap offsite
disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the booted or
the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups. You
would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another drive,
and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive hardware
controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for it not to
work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't bootable. A
better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone the hard
drive to a second drive then remove the second drive. When you want
another backup put in another drive and create another clone. This can
be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need to do the
swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development
in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I
understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive
so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the
tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and
then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be
brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to swap
backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in
regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:" drive
rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of this
type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista? Any
particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of the
mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted drive
to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or must you
normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for hardware or
software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or must
I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even work the
same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Dave]

Well Kerry maybe you should learn to think out of the box a bit and you
could see that if the software was done correctly it would in fact be an
excellent backup mechanism as I am suggesting rather than dismiss the notion
per the acronym what with hot swapping and trays working as well as they do
nowadays.

Can anyone actually answer my questions isntead of just telling me this is a
bad idea?

Thanks,
- Dave

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer keeps
working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works very well
at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed to be a
backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is some
merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the first
place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap offsite
disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the booted or
the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups. You
would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another drive,
and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive hardware
controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for it not to
work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't bootable. A
better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone the hard
drive to a second drive then remove the second drive. When you want
another backup put in another drive and create another clone. This can
be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need to do the
swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development
in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I
understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive
so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the
tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and
then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be
brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to swap
backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in
regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:" drive
rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of this
type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista? Any
particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of the
mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted drive
to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or must you
normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for hardware or
software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or must
I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even work the
same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Kerry Brown]

What happened to you is what RAID is for. What the OP wants is to swap
multiple disks in and out of a RAID 1 array for backup purposes. Depending
on the controller this will eventually lead to corrupted data. The "backup"
disk may not be bootable depending on the controller. The amount of time to
rebuild the array will probably be longer and cause a bigger performance hit
than creating a proper disk image would take. Many RAID controllers can't
rebuild an array on the fly anyway. There are many reasons why using RAID
for backup isn't a good idea I use RAID in every server I build. They
also have a backup strategy that has backups on at least two different media
types.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

It does work, not designed to be that way, but it works. I recently had a
RAID controller go bad, replaced it and a bad HD (power problem). Replaced
one of the two drives, rebuilt the array and back up and running (scary
few days with just one HD). We had backups, but with the RAID array, it
kept the business up and running with little down time.

Not the easiest or correct way to use RAID, but it can save your data in
case of HD failure.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer keeps
working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works very
well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed to be
a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap offsite
disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the booted or
the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups. You
would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another drive,
and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive hardware
controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for it not to
work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't bootable.
A better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone the hard
drive to a second drive then remove the second drive. When you want
another backup put in another drive and create another clone. This can
be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need to do the
swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development
in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I
understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive
so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the
tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and
then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be
brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to
swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in
regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:"
drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of this
type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista? Any
particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or must
you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for hardware or
software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even work
the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Dave]

If that's as well as it worked and you could depend on corrupted data I'd
file an engineering report to the manufacturer as that is a bad system and
there is no reason it should not work better than that.

The idea is transparency in action. You just swap drive once a week or
whenever as long as they had enough time to resync in the background. Boot
sectors included.

- Dave

What happened to you is what RAID is for. What the OP wants is to swap
multiple disks in and out of a RAID 1 array for backup purposes. Depending
on the controller this will eventually lead to corrupted data. The
"backup" disk may not be bootable depending on the controller. The amount
of time to rebuild the array will probably be longer and cause a bigger
performance hit than creating a proper disk image would take. Many RAID
controllers can't rebuild an array on the fly anyway. There are many
reasons why using RAID for backup isn't a good idea I use RAID in
every server I build. They also have a backup strategy that has backups on
at least two different media types.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

It does work, not designed to be that way, but it works. I recently had a
RAID controller go bad, replaced it and a bad HD (power problem).
Replaced one of the two drives, rebuilt the array and back up and running
(scary few days with just one HD). We had backups, but with the RAID
array, it kept the business up and running with little down time.

Not the easiest or correct way to use RAID, but it can save your data in
case of HD failure.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer
keeps working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works
very well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed
to be a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap
offsite disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the
booted or the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups.
You would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another
drive, and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive
hardware controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for
it not to work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't
bootable. A better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone
the hard drive to a second drive then remove the second drive. When
you want another backup put in another drive and create another clone.
This can be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need
to do the swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development
in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I
understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive
so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the
tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and
then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be
brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to
swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in
regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:"
drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of
this type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista?
Any particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or
must you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for
hardware or software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even
work the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Kerry Brown]

You asked a question. I gave you an answer based on my experience. I have
worked with many different RAID setups in may different OS'. I have actually
tried to setup a system similar to what you want to do. It didn't work as
well as a disk imaging system with multiple USB drives.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

Well Kerry maybe you should learn to think out of the box a bit and you
could see that if the software was done correctly it would in fact be an
excellent backup mechanism as I am suggesting rather than dismiss the
notion per the acronym what with hot swapping and trays working as well as
they do nowadays.

Can anyone actually answer my questions isntead of just telling me this is
a bad idea?

Thanks,
- Dave

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer keeps
working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works very
well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed to be
a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap offsite
disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the booted or
the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups. You
would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another drive,
and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive hardware
controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for it not to
work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't bootable.
A better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone the hard
drive to a second drive then remove the second drive. When you want
another backup put in another drive and create another clone. This can
be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need to do the
swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development
in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I
understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive
so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the
tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and
then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be
brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to
swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in
regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:"
drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of this
type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista? Any
particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or must
you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for hardware or
software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even work
the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Dustin Harper]

RAID is decent for a backup, in the sense for hardware failure. But, it is
still onsite, and still in the same PC. Should a fire, or a multiple HD
failure, or a format of the array, or corruption, it isn't a backup. If one
HD goes bad, it's the other one that saves it. If you have an offsite
backup; i.e. a DVD, Tape backup, you have something that isn't connected to
the PC. Almost a permanent copy of the files that were there when the backup
was created.

RAID has it's uses, but as a removable backup device, it's not a good idea.
RAID works great in servers. If a HD goes out, you replace it, and you're
back up and running (you can even run one, but it's all sweat and sleepless
nights until the other gets replaced!). But, if the the whole array goes to
hell, and you don't have a tape backup or other... you're screwed. If you
take one HD out at night for the backup, and put it back in in the morning,
you're still taking a chance.

We had a RAID (which saved us!), but we also had a tape backup. The RAID was
the easy fix. The tape backup would be safer, but more difficult. RAID isn't
meant for off-site backups. It's meant for hardware failure within the PC
itself.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

What happened to you is what RAID is for. What the OP wants is to swap
multiple disks in and out of a RAID 1 array for backup purposes. Depending
on the controller this will eventually lead to corrupted data. The
"backup" disk may not be bootable depending on the controller. The amount
of time to rebuild the array will probably be longer and cause a bigger
performance hit than creating a proper disk image would take. Many RAID
controllers can't rebuild an array on the fly anyway. There are many
reasons why using RAID for backup isn't a good idea I use RAID in
every server I build. They also have a backup strategy that has backups on
at least two different media types.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

It does work, not designed to be that way, but it works. I recently had a
RAID controller go bad, replaced it and a bad HD (power problem).
Replaced one of the two drives, rebuilt the array and back up and running
(scary few days with just one HD). We had backups, but with the RAID
array, it kept the business up and running with little down time.

Not the easiest or correct way to use RAID, but it can save your data in
case of HD failure.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer
keeps working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works
very well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed
to be a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap
offsite disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the
booted or the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups.
You would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another
drive, and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive
hardware controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for
it not to work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't
bootable. A better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone
the hard drive to a second drive then remove the second drive. When
you want another backup put in another drive and create another clone.
This can be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need
to do the swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development
in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I
understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive
so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the
tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and
then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be
brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to
swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in
regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:"
drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of
this type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista?
Any particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or
must you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for
hardware or software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even
work the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Dave]

I would never use USB drives for my primary backup device [too slow]
although I do use them as second level offsite copies of my Acronis images
but it is a bit of a pain and that is exactly why I am trying to
conceptually advance how mirrors could be used for effectively tranparent
backups. Drives are plenty reliable to not particularly need redundancy
[except in server situations where you could not stand a 1 or 2 hour
outage]. For my development desktop I want the convenience of backups not
the redundancy as MTBF is already acceptable.

If we only did what we were supposed to do then not much new would happen
would it?

If RAID1 software was coded properly you could get transparent backups as
well as the redundant protection you say it was only designed for.

I asked 4 questions. Only #4 introduces the concept of extending RAID1 for
backup purposes.

Bottom line is I would like some suggestions as to whether I should use hard
or soft RAID1 on Vista and would like to know what happens if a drive is
disconnected [i.e. "fails"] and then I add another drive while the system is
running [hot swap] and whether it is typical that you must run utilities to
resync the mirror or whether hard or soft setup allows automatic resync with
the good drive remaining. Enevitable corruption is a bug not a feature.

Questions are:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of this
type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista? Any
particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or must
you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for hardware or
software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even work
the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Dave]

Yes I understand the normal use of RAID1 and backup hierachies and how to
logon.

Why should you lose sleep if a RAID1 partner goes out and you are ruunning
on only one prop if you have image backups? Guess it depends on the
application which is NOT an issue in my scenario which is essentially a
forced failure and hopefully transparent background rebuild from a hotswap.

Are you guys telling me the ONLY way to rebuild a RAID1 partner drive is to
shut the system down and run utilities to resync the drives?

There is no autosync on a hot swap with either soft or hard RAID1???

- Dave

RAID is decent for a backup, in the sense for hardware failure. But, it is
still onsite, and still in the same PC. Should a fire, or a multiple HD
failure, or a format of the array, or corruption, it isn't a backup. If
one HD goes bad, it's the other one that saves it. If you have an offsite
backup; i.e. a DVD, Tape backup, you have something that isn't connected
to the PC. Almost a permanent copy of the files that were there when the
backup was created.

RAID has it's uses, but as a removable backup device, it's not a good
idea. RAID works great in servers. If a HD goes out, you replace it, and
you're back up and running (you can even run one, but it's all sweat and
sleepless nights until the other gets replaced!). But, if the the whole
array goes to hell, and you don't have a tape backup or other... you're
screwed. If you take one HD out at night for the backup, and put it back
in in the morning, you're still taking a chance.

We had a RAID (which saved us!), but we also had a tape backup. The RAID
was the easy fix. The tape backup would be safer, but more difficult. RAID
isn't meant for off-site backups. It's meant for hardware failure within
the PC itself.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

What happened to you is what RAID is for. What the OP wants is to swap
multiple disks in and out of a RAID 1 array for backup purposes.
Depending on the controller this will eventually lead to corrupted data.
The "backup" disk may not be bootable depending on the controller. The
amount of time to rebuild the array will probably be longer and cause a
bigger performance hit than creating a proper disk image would take. Many
RAID controllers can't rebuild an array on the fly anyway. There are many
reasons why using RAID for backup isn't a good idea I use RAID in
every server I build. They also have a backup strategy that has backups
on at least two different media types.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

It does work, not designed to be that way, but it works. I recently had
a RAID controller go bad, replaced it and a bad HD (power problem).
Replaced one of the two drives, rebuilt the array and back up and
running (scary few days with just one HD). We had backups, but with the
RAID array, it kept the business up and running with little down time.

Not the easiest or correct way to use RAID, but it can save your data in
case of HD failure.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--
RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer
keeps working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works
very well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed
to be a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap
offsite disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the
booted or the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups.
You would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another
drive, and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive
hardware controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for
it not to work. It's also very common that the drive you removed
isn't bootable. A better solution is to use a disk imaging program
and clone the hard drive to a second drive then remove the second
drive. When you want another backup put in another drive and create
another clone. This can be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA
drives if you need to do the swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software
development in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup
though I understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration
just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot
drive so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive
in the tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a
backup and then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want
it to be brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I
want to swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do
in regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:"
drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of
this type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista?
Any particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or
must you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for
hardware or software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even
work the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and
configure to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Chris Jacobsen]

No knowledgeable, experienced technical resource would ever support the
notion of using RAID arrays for backup. If you want to do that then you
should not be asking qualified people for their input.

IT IS A BAD IDEA!

Well Kerry maybe you should learn to think out of the box a bit and you
could see that if the software was done correctly it would in fact be an
excellent backup mechanism as I am suggesting rather than dismiss the
notion per the acronym what with hot swapping and trays working as well as
they do nowadays.

Can anyone actually answer my questions isntead of just telling me this is
a bad idea?

Thanks,
- Dave

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer keeps
working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works very
well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed to be
a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap offsite
disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the booted or
the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups. You
would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another drive,
and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive hardware
controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for it not to
work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't bootable.
A better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone the hard
drive to a second drive then remove the second drive. When you want
another backup put in another drive and create another clone. This can
be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need to do the
swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development
in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I
understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive
so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the
tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and
then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be
brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to
swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in
regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:"
drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of this
type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista? Any
particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or must
you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for hardware or
software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even work
the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Dustin Harper]

I'm not sure on that one. A hotswap will probably take time, but it all
depends on the RAID controller. Either way, it probably isn't the best idea
to use it regularly as a backup option.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

Yes I understand the normal use of RAID1 and backup hierachies and how to
logon.

Why should you lose sleep if a RAID1 partner goes out and you are ruunning
on only one prop if you have image backups? Guess it depends on the
application which is NOT an issue in my scenario which is essentially a
forced failure and hopefully transparent background rebuild from a
hotswap.

Are you guys telling me the ONLY way to rebuild a RAID1 partner drive is
to shut the system down and run utilities to resync the drives?

There is no autosync on a hot swap with either soft or hard RAID1???

- Dave

RAID is decent for a backup, in the sense for hardware failure. But, it
is still onsite, and still in the same PC. Should a fire, or a multiple
HD failure, or a format of the array, or corruption, it isn't a backup.
If one HD goes bad, it's the other one that saves it. If you have an
offsite backup; i.e. a DVD, Tape backup, you have something that isn't
connected to the PC. Almost a permanent copy of the files that were there
when the backup was created.

RAID has it's uses, but as a removable backup device, it's not a good
idea. RAID works great in servers. If a HD goes out, you replace it, and
you're back up and running (you can even run one, but it's all sweat and
sleepless nights until the other gets replaced!). But, if the the whole
array goes to hell, and you don't have a tape backup or other... you're
screwed. If you take one HD out at night for the backup, and put it back
in in the morning, you're still taking a chance.

We had a RAID (which saved us!), but we also had a tape backup. The RAID
was the easy fix. The tape backup would be safer, but more difficult.
RAID isn't meant for off-site backups. It's meant for hardware failure
within the PC itself.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

What happened to you is what RAID is for. What the OP wants is to swap
multiple disks in and out of a RAID 1 array for backup purposes.
Depending on the controller this will eventually lead to corrupted data.
The "backup" disk may not be bootable depending on the controller. The
amount of time to rebuild the array will probably be longer and cause a
bigger performance hit than creating a proper disk image would take.
Many RAID controllers can't rebuild an array on the fly anyway. There
are many reasons why using RAID for backup isn't a good idea I use
RAID in every server I build. They also have a backup strategy that has
backups on at least two different media types.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


It does work, not designed to be that way, but it works. I recently had
a RAID controller go bad, replaced it and a bad HD (power problem).
Replaced one of the two drives, rebuilt the array and back up and
running (scary few days with just one HD). We had backups, but with the
RAID array, it kept the business up and running with little down time.

Not the easiest or correct way to use RAID, but it can save your data
in case of HD failure.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--
RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer
keeps working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works
very well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never
designed to be a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap
offsite disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the
booted or the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups.
You would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another
drive, and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive
hardware controller this process is not foolproof and it's common
for it not to work. It's also very common that the drive you removed
isn't bootable. A better solution is to use a disk imaging program
and clone the hard drive to a second drive then remove the second
drive. When you want another backup put in another drive and create
another clone. This can be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA
drives if you need to do the swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software
development in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup
though I understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration
just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and
three Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the
boot drive so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the
drive in the tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite
for a backup and then insert the previous drive that was offsite
and want it to be brought up to date as a bootable drive for the
next time I want to swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup
the boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to
do in regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the
"D:" drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of
this type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista?
Any particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly
inserted drive to be updated to the current mirror status
automatically or must you normally run some utilitiy to do this?
Different for hardware or software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even
work the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the
original boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive
and configure to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID
configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Dustin Harper]

As the others have said: it's a bad idea. It will work, but for how long and
how well is questionable. That is why it is a bad idea. It may work great
for you. It may not. It's going to be un-reliable. Hence, not a great backup
system.

You may not have any issues for years, if at all. BUT, you might have a
problem at day one. We can't predict that.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

No knowledgeable, experienced technical resource would ever support the
notion of using RAID arrays for backup. If you want to do that then you
should not be asking qualified people for their input.

IT IS A BAD IDEA!

Well Kerry maybe you should learn to think out of the box a bit and you
could see that if the software was done correctly it would in fact be an
excellent backup mechanism as I am suggesting rather than dismiss the
notion per the acronym what with hot swapping and trays working as well
as they do nowadays.

Can anyone actually answer my questions isntead of just telling me this
is a bad idea?

Thanks,
- Dave

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer
keeps working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works
very well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed
to be a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap
offsite disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the
booted or the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups.
You would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another
drive, and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive
hardware controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for
it not to work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't
bootable. A better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone
the hard drive to a second drive then remove the second drive. When
you want another backup put in another drive and create another clone.
This can be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need
to do the swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development
in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I
understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive
so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the
tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and
then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be
brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to
swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in
regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:"
drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of
this type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista?
Any particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or
must you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for
hardware or software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even
work the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Dave]

Gee that is really helpful and does a lot to further computer science. Can I
quote you on that in the future when some "unqualified" person upgrades
drivers to allow seamlessly hotswapping drives and stashing them as backups
whilst a RAID system replenishes a new drive insertion???

Don't be so narrow minded you try to tell me what to do or not do if you
can't answer my questions.

- Dave

No knowledgeable, experienced technical resource would ever support the
notion of using RAID arrays for backup. If you want to do that then you
should not be asking qualified people for their input.

IT IS A BAD IDEA!

Well Kerry maybe you should learn to think out of the box a bit and you
could see that if the software was done correctly it would in fact be an
excellent backup mechanism as I am suggesting rather than dismiss the
notion per the acronym what with hot swapping and trays working as well
as they do nowadays.

Can anyone actually answer my questions isntead of just telling me this
is a bad idea?

Thanks,
- Dave

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer
keeps working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works
very well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed
to be a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap
offsite disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the
booted or the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups.
You would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another
drive, and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive
hardware controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for
it not to work. It's also very common that the drive you removed isn't
bootable. A better solution is to use a disk imaging program and clone
the hard drive to a second drive then remove the second drive. When
you want another backup put in another drive and create another clone.
This can be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA drives if you need
to do the swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software development
in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup though I
understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot drive
so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive in the
tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a backup and
then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want it to be
brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I want to
swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do in
regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:"
drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of
this type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista?
Any particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or
must you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for
hardware or software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even
work the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Dave]

As the others have said: it's a bad idea. It will work, but for how long
and how well is questionable. That is why it is a bad idea. It may work
great for you. It may not. It's going to be un-reliable. Hence, not a
great backup system.

You may not have any issues for years, if at all. BUT, you might have a
problem at day one. We can't predict that.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

No knowledgeable, experienced technical resource would ever support the
notion of using RAID arrays for backup. If you want to do that then you
should not be asking qualified people for their input.

IT IS A BAD IDEA!

Well Kerry maybe you should learn to think out of the box a bit and you
could see that if the software was done correctly it would in fact be an
excellent backup mechanism as I am suggesting rather than dismiss the
notion per the acronym what with hot swapping and trays working as well
as they do nowadays.

Can anyone actually answer my questions isntead of just telling me this
is a bad idea?

Thanks,
- Dave

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer
keeps working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works
very well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed
to be a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap
offsite disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the
booted or the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups.
You would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another
drive, and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive
hardware controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for
it not to work. It's also very common that the drive you removed
isn't bootable. A better solution is to use a disk imaging program
and clone the hard drive to a second drive then remove the second
drive. When you want another backup put in another drive and create
another clone. This can be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA
drives if you need to do the swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software
development in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup
though I understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration
just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot
drive so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive
in the tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a
backup and then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want
it to be brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I
want to swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do
in regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:"
drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of
this type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista?
Any particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or
must you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for
hardware or software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even
work the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and
configure to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Dave]

So why is it inherently unreliable? Does RAID1 not actually work if a drive
fails? Are you not able to rebuild the mirror? Again, this is an engineering
bug even if it is a fact.

- Dave

As the others have said: it's a bad idea. It will work, but for how long
and how well is questionable. That is why it is a bad idea. It may work
great for you. It may not. It's going to be un-reliable. Hence, not a
great backup system.

You may not have any issues for years, if at all. BUT, you might have a
problem at day one. We can't predict that.

--
Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com

--

No knowledgeable, experienced technical resource would ever support the
notion of using RAID arrays for backup. If you want to do that then you
should not be asking qualified people for their input.

IT IS A BAD IDEA!

Well Kerry maybe you should learn to think out of the box a bit and you
could see that if the software was done correctly it would in fact be an
excellent backup mechanism as I am suggesting rather than dismiss the
notion per the acronym what with hot swapping and trays working as well
as they do nowadays.

Can anyone actually answer my questions isntead of just telling me this
is a bad idea?

Thanks,
- Dave

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word is
redundant. If a disk fails the array will not fail and the computer
keeps working until you can schedule the down time to fix it. It works
very well at what it was designed for. It is not and was never designed
to be a backup system.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


If common for it not to work what good is RAID? Gotta think there is
some merit to RAID and this idea than it likely wouldn't work in the
first place. Not ready to give up yet.

I already image to another drive.

What I want is to just be able to pull a mirrored drive and swap
offsite disks and let the new disk come back up to speed whether the
booted or the backup drive.

Thanks,
- Dave

This is indeed a very bad idea. RAID is for redundancy not backups.
You would have to break the mirror, remove one drive, insert another
drive, and recreate the mirror. Unless you have a very expensive
hardware controller this process is not foolproof and it's common for
it not to work. It's also very common that the drive you removed
isn't bootable. A better solution is to use a disk imaging program
and clone the hard drive to a second drive then remove the second
drive. When you want another backup put in another drive and create
another clone. This can be done with USB, firewire or some eSATA
drives if you need to do the swapping without downing the computer.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


I am plenty experienced with windows hardware and software
development in most areas except am a complete newbie for raid setup
though I understand the purpose and pitfalls of each configuration
just fine.

I have an MSI Platinum P6N with 2G, Intel E6600, SataII 3G and three
Seagate 320G Barracudas and would like to run RAID1 on the boot
drive so I can regularly [once per week] hot swap out one the drive
in the tray which is part of the mirror and haul it offsite for a
backup and then insert the previous drive that was offsite and want
it to be brought up to date as a bootable drive for the next time I
want to swap backups.

If this is too cumbersone or a bad idea then plan B is to backup the
boot drive to a RAID1 mirror and to then do what I am hoping to do
in regards to hot swapping alternating drives offsite using the "D:"
drive rather than the boot drive.

Questions:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of
this type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista?
Any particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or
must you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for
hardware or software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even
work the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and
configure to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks so much,
Dave

 

[Kerry Brown]

Think about what you are trying to do and how RAID works. RAID is a real
time system that spreads reads/writes across an array of drives. In your
case (RAID 1) it keeps a mirror image on two drives. In any modern OS there
are many background processes running any of which may be writing to the
hard drive at any given time. When one drive fails (or you pull it from a
hot swap bay) the writes continue on the remaining drive. This means the
drive you pulled may have been in the middle of a write operation and the
file system may be in an unstable state (corrupted). How useful is this as a
backup? So, to use it for a backup you have to break the mirror before
pulling the "backup" drive. How convenient is this? Now when you install a
different drive the RAID has to be resynched. In my experience if you have
any amount of data on the drive this can take a few hours and computer
performance is impacted during this time. With some RAID controllers this
can't even be done while the OS is running anyway. When the main drive fails
what happens? You install one of the "backup" drives. If you are lucky it
will boot and away you go. More likely you will have to go into the RAID
setup and break the mirror before the drive will boot or install two drives
and let them synch before it will boot. If you have used software mirroring
(which doesn't support hot swapping) you will have to boot from a floppy
that you created and edit the arc path in the boot.ini and hope it boots OK.
Now that you've got it booted you have to deal with the results of pulling
the drive out instead of breaking the mirror.

Now look at the scenario I suggested. Using USB, Firewire, SCSI, SAS, or
eSATA external drives (depending on your budget and need for speed) you have
a disk imaging program that runs on a schedule. Once a day or however often
you wish you unplug the external drive and plug in a new one. The backups
are fully bootable. As long as they use the same interface as the main drive
if the main drive fails you replace it with one of the backup drives and
away you go.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca

I would never use USB drives for my primary backup device [too slow]
although I do use them as second level offsite copies of my Acronis images
but it is a bit of a pain and that is exactly why I am trying to
conceptually advance how mirrors could be used for effectively tranparent
backups. Drives are plenty reliable to not particularly need redundancy
[except in server situations where you could not stand a 1 or 2 hour
outage]. For my development desktop I want the convenience of backups not
the redundancy as MTBF is already acceptable.

If we only did what we were supposed to do then not much new would happen
would it?

If RAID1 software was coded properly you could get transparent backups as
well as the redundant protection you say it was only designed for.

I asked 4 questions. Only #4 introduces the concept of extending RAID1 for
backup purposes.

Bottom line is I would like some suggestions as to whether I should use
hard or soft RAID1 on Vista and would like to know what happens if a drive
is disconnected [i.e. "fails"] and then I add another drive while the
system is running [hot swap] and whether it is typical that you must run
utilities to resync the mirror or whether hard or soft setup allows
automatic resync with the good drive remaining. Enevitable corruption is a
bug not a feature.

Questions are:

1 - better to run hardware or software raid1 on a Vista system of this
type? Why? Do I need new RAID/SATA software drivers for Vista? Any
particularly good raid links you can recommend?

2 - using a drive hotswap tray I plan to install, can I pull one of
the mirrored drives and insert another and expect the newly inserted
drive to be updated to the current mirror status automatically or must
you normally run some utilitiy to do this? Different for hardware or
software setup?

3 - I read that older nVidia nForce chipsets had to have the OS
reinstalled if you turned on RAID1 for the boot drive. I have the
nForce 430i chipset and am wondering if they fixed this problem or
must I plan to image the OS back using Acronis and will that even work
the same as if I was still using just the one boot drive?

4 - can you in fact boot off the RAID1 partner drive if the original
boot drive fails or you have to go get the backup drive and configure
to boot the backup drive not part of a RAID configuration?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Dave]

OK Thanks for the thought and time Kerry.