RAID

  • Thread starter Thread starter MM
  • Start date Start date
M

MM

Hi all,

I've just bought a K8V SE Deluxe motherboard and a SATA hard drive and
considering getting a second drive for RAID to increase system reliability.
Does anyone know how RAID will behave should Windows XP corrupt the file
system? Will it honestly mirror the same corrupted file system to the second
drive or is it smart enough not to do it?

Also, I would like to get an opinion on whether it is worth creating a
separate partition for Windows? I am thinking of using Norton Ghost or
similar software for saving drive images... I just had a hard drive crashed,
so I am reassessing my practices...


Thanks,
/MM
 
MM said:
Hi all,

I've just bought a K8V SE Deluxe motherboard and a SATA hard drive and
considering getting a second drive for RAID to increase system
reliability.
Does anyone know how RAID will behave should Windows XP corrupt the file
system? Will it honestly mirror the same corrupted file system to the
second
drive or is it smart enough not to do it?

Also, I would like to get an opinion on whether it is worth creating a
separate partition for Windows? I am thinking of using Norton Ghost or
similar software for saving drive images... I just had a hard drive
crashed,
so I am reassessing my practices...


Thanks,
/MM
Click to expand...

RAID will not protect you from corrupted data. RAID 1 is mainly used incase
of a drive failure you can replace the bad drive and the controller will
rebuild
the array. I would use Ghost or Acronis true image to image your
windows drive. But I wouldn't store the image on the same physical drive
that the windows directory is on. Either put the image on CD's or a seperate
drive. That way if the windows drive crashes you'll have access to the
image.
I would use the imaging software even if you use RAID

Jim M
 
JBM said:
RAID will not protect you from corrupted data.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought. Thanks.
I would use Ghost or Acronis true image to image your
windows drive. But I wouldn't store the image on the same physical drive
that the windows directory is on. Either put the image on CD's or a seperate
drive. That way if the windows drive crashes you'll have access to the
image.
I would use the imaging software even if you use RAID
Click to expand...

I have never used the imaging software, so I am not sure how it can be
tuned, but I am guessing that it is not practical to save images of a 160GB
drive, so that's why I was thinking of creating a separate partition for a
system... Then I would save system image every time I change hardware or
install some major software and I would save user data on regular data CDs
or DVDs. Does it make sense? I stopped partitioning drives some time ago
since I found that if I did I would eventually run out of space on drive C:
as my original estimate for its size would be always too small....

/MM
 
MM said:
That's what I thought. Thanks.


I have never used the imaging software, so I am not sure how it can be
tuned, but I am guessing that it is not practical to save images of a
160GB
drive, so that's why I was thinking of creating a separate partition for a
system... Then I would save system image every time I change hardware or
install some major software and I would save user data on regular data CDs
or DVDs. Does it make sense? I stopped partitioning drives some time ago
since I found that if I did I would eventually run out of space on drive
C:
as my original estimate for its size would be always too small....

/MM
Click to expand...

I use Acronis true image which only images the part of the disk that has
data on it.
As the drive gets full it becomes as you say impracticall to save to CD or
DVD, which
is why I use a seperate drive. And it does make sense to save important
data to a
seperate CD as well, especially if you going to put your system partition
and image
on the same physical drive.

Jim M
 
MM said:
That's what I thought. Thanks.


I have never used the imaging software, so I am not sure how it can be
tuned, but I am guessing that it is not practical to save images of a
160GB
drive, so that's why I was thinking of creating a separate partition for a
system... Then I would save system image every time I change hardware or
install some major software and I would save user data on regular data CDs
or DVDs. Does it make sense? I stopped partitioning drives some time ago
since I found that if I did I would eventually run out of space on drive
C:
as my original estimate for its size would be always too small....

/MM
Click to expand...

The mirrored drives will only protect you from a hard drive failure. Good
backup procedures will protect you from loss of data. RAID is more for
uptime. A RAID drive can fail and you system will continue to run. If you're
looking at backup, a portable (USB/Firewire) drive maybe a better choice
then RAID.
 
Assuming you set up a RAID 1 array, mirroring, to have two harddrives with
the same info on each as a backup, if XP corrupts the file system it will be
corrupted on BOTH harddrives. They are IDENTICAL in content.
 
MM said:
Hi all,

I've just bought a K8V SE Deluxe motherboard and a SATA hard drive and
considering getting a second drive for RAID to increase system
reliability.
Does anyone know how RAID will behave should Windows XP corrupt the file
system? Will it honestly mirror the same corrupted file system to the
second
drive or is it smart enough not to do it?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I can't answer this part definitively - but I hope it's the latter
(smart enough).
Also, I would like to get an opinion on whether it is worth creating a
separate partition for Windows? I am thinking of using Norton Ghost or
similar software for saving drive images... I just had a hard drive
crashed,
so I am reassessing my practices...
Click to expand...

In the past I've considered creating a drive image. I decided it wasn't
worth the trouble because I never set up my system the same way any two
times. Even my backup machine is different from my primary.

What IS important is to keep multiple copies of your DATA! That's a good
argument for a RAID mirror configuration - but simply copying the new stuff
to a second machine's non-Windows partition (via ethernet or a backup USB2
drive) where you maintain an archive of whatever you know you want to keep
forever also works. Usually the stuff you want to save is pictures, sounds,
e-mails, documents and maybe a few program files.

Use that RAID setup in a striped configuration instead. Your machine will
FLY then!

Getting back to your original question, the answer is YES, you _should_
create a separate, primary partition for your operating system, whether it
be Windows, OS2, Linux or whatever. Make it spacious enough to include all
your programs and temp files. Nowadays you need ~30 to 50+ GB for the
primary partition.

It's not a bad idea to make a second partition (drive D:)
just for the Windows pagefile. That only needs to be about twice the size
of your installed memory IIRC. If you do this, you need to set it up in the
Windows control panel manually.

E: could be your data storage partition.

If you're into video rendering and editing, you should also create another
partition (or more) for that.

Are we having fun yet? :^D

Tom S
 
Hi all,

I've just bought a K8V SE Deluxe motherboard and a SATA hard drive and
considering getting a second drive for RAID to increase system reliability.
Does anyone know how RAID will behave should Windows XP corrupt the file
system? Will it honestly mirror the same corrupted file system to the second
drive or is it smart enough not to do it?

Also, I would like to get an opinion on whether it is worth creating a
separate partition for Windows? I am thinking of using Norton Ghost or
similar software for saving drive images... I just had a hard drive crashed,
so I am reassessing my practices...


Thanks,
/MM
Click to expand...

One source of corruption with a RAID, is loss of power in the
middle of a write operation. That could result in a slight
difference between the two mirrored volumes. You can prevent
that, to a large extent, with a UPS power supply for the
computer.

A journalled file system helps to keep track of what files
are whole and committed, and what fragments are invalid. That
will give you a more robust file system, no matter whether
using RAID or not.

If the system software fails in some way, causing invalid data
to be written somewhere on the disk(s), there is no protection
from that. At work, we had two RAID5 failures, where the hardware
controller decided to overwrite sector 0, wiping out the array.
Hundreds of employees were unable to work for hours, while the
arrays were restored from tape. Normally, if a RAID5 has a simple
disk failure, you can hot swap a drive and rebuild the array,
and still offer service to clients at the same time. If the
array is wiped out, then you have to start all over again.

So, there are some failure cases (power failure or erroneous
write type failure) that the redundancy in the array cannot
protect again. That is why backups are still required.

HTH,
Paul
 
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