Raid 5 problem

[mattrix]

Hi all, I've been reading the Tom's Hardware guide on setting up software Raid 5 in winxp, and have come to a grinding hault on one of the pages. I have used a hex editor to change the files that need to be changed, and have copied the files over accordingly, however when i right-click the drives in the computer management screen and click "new volume" it says "there are five types of volumes: simple, spanned, striped, mirrored, and RAID-5" but then below only offers me simple, spanned and striped. I am running 3 40gb drives, 2 of them are on a seperate IDE controller car, and 1 is hooked up to an IDE controller on the motherboard. To my knowledge there's no reason this shouldnt be working. help!

Matt

 

[riser]

Not sure how that extra IDE controller will effect you.. normally you can get those that run a hardware based RAID or sometimes they use software to do it..

You might want to hook up your 2 drives to your mobo's ide controllers just to see if you get the option for the RAID 5.. I haven't tried what the article listed.. as I'd just do striping and run a backup every now and then..

 

[mattrix]

Yeah I'd thought about doing similar, but RAID 5 seems to just be a better way to do it. I'd be too slack with backups anyway, so I'd rather have it set up to look after itself.
Haven't tried plugging the drives into the 2 motherboard controllers, I bought the RAID/IDE card because I read another Tom's Hardware test that said if you run each drive on it's own channel the speed increases significantly. so running 3 drives off the 2 channels on the motherboard would kind of defeat the purpose. it's only a simple raid card, so don't really want to use it as RAID, just as an IDE controller instead. Anyone have any ideas? I'll try changing the way it's all plugged in tonight, and I'll post up here to say whether that works or not.

Matt

 

[riser]

Considering what you're doing, you're better off moving to a Mirror setup. You'll still have your backup should a drive fail and it will perform faster than your RAID 5 plus give you more hard drive space. In a RAID 5 you lose the amount of 1 hard drive for backup purposes. And then you have to worry about if that software will allow you to rebuild your RAID5 easily.
If you just mirror it, it'll operate at the same hard drive speed with a back up. You could stripe it which will be the fastest, but no backups.

 

[mattrix]

Not quite my cup of tea, I would be looking more at a 0+1 setup if I were to give up on the Raid 5 idea, as I need quick write speed more than I need quick read speed.

Back to the original task at hand, I put all the drives on the mainboard IDE channels and opened up the disk management, and it will still only give me 3 options (the ones listed in the first post). Now I know that the car couldn't be causing the problem, what else could be wrong? I've double checked all the files that were meant to be changed in the hex editor and they are all still changed (windows hasn't written over the top of them).
help!!!!

Matt

 

[riser]

Are you using the Pro version or Home version?

I recall reading the article on switching it over.. you may want to email the author to see if he'll give you some help. Somewhere along the line you had to have missed something or typed something wrong..

 

[mattrix]

Pro version. Have triple checked all the changes, there seems to be nothing wrong.
will contact author and see what he says. thanks for your help anyway