Hi

i found the XP Raid-5 hack here, but didn't see any follow up on it. I have a system that i set up 3 500gb drives as a single dynamic disk. one of the drives is going bad and will be send in for repair. In the mean time, i realized that i had to pull off ALL the data to get that drive off.

not fun.

based on this, i want at least a Raid 5 solution. I need the maximum amount of storage space i can get with some form of protection against a hard drive dying.

Furthermore, i dual boot between XP and Vista Ultimate right now. I need my storage array to be able to be seen in either OS without any problems at all.

Does anyone here know if Vista can see software RAID-5 arrays that were created in XP via the hack? what about the opposet (Raid-5s created in Vista seen in xp)?

thank you

get a real raid card also the on board software raid chips in the new MB are a little better then the windows software raid.

Get a hardware raid card! Software RAID-5 is BAD BAD BAD. Twice when a drive fails(even though it's supposed to be okay) it wasn't. We did, after ALOT of work get it back, but it was very complex and required my programming skills to write some stuff to make it work. Not cool IMO.

can't afford a hardware raid card that won't tax the processor, from what i read. I need a hardware raid card sub $50 that won't stress out an Athlon XP 3200+

also, though i appreciate your replies about the software raid-5, they still didn't answer my question, and there have yet to be solutions presented....so:

1st - Does anyone know if Vista can see RAID-5 setups created by XP

2nd - Does anyone know if XP can see RAID-5 setups created in Vista

3rd - Does anyone know of a good hardware RAID controller that will handle at least 6 SATA drives, won't tax my Athlon XP 3200+ processor, and is under $50?

Well, here's my 2 cents on your dilemma.

1. You have 3x500GB you want on a RAID-5.
2. You don't have the $$$ for a hardare based solution.(limited to $50 for a controller, which is not gonna happen)
3. You want RAID-5 for reliability.

IMO you can't have all 3 of these things. Here's my comments, and I'm not trying to bash you, I just want you to realize what you are saying.

1. Software RAID-5 goes down the tubes when a drive dies. Yeah, I know all about how reliabie RAID-5 is, but from personal experience, you might as well run RAID-0 if you are gonna rn software RAID-5. Loss of 1 disk WILL result in the array going down until you replace the drive. Even after replacing it, the OS will fight you tooth and nail before letting you rebuild it, if you can even get the damn thing to! We were unable to get the array to mount in reduced status.

2. You effectivelyare putting a value on your data of $50 max because that's all you are willing to spend for a hardware RAID-5 that is MUCH more reliable. So it's resonable to assume you also won't think of spending more than $50 for backups, right? And you probably won't be more than $50 worth of pissed off if you lose your data, right? See what I'm getting at here. You are expecting too much from RAID-5(let alone software). You still NEED to do backups, EVEN with RAID-6. Going to a redundant array doesn't not mean you don't need backups. They are just as important as doing RAID-0. All RAID-5 does is save you the hassle of recovering your data if a drive is bad.

3. Yes, the do see each other. However, I STRONGLY, STRONGLY, STRONGLY recommend against it. There's a few little things that Windows Vista and XP do that realize that another 'operating system' has accessed the array since it was last used. I'm not sure what all of the implications of that are, or if the array would be recoverable on either OS if that happened.

Big picture though, although it is feasible, If i had to give a short answer to you on if it will work or not, I'd say no because IMO you don't understand how dangerous and slow a software RAID-5 is. You also do not value your data and probably do not do backups(which means RAID only means you are increasing the likelyhood of losing all of your data because there's 3 failure points instead of one).

One of the things that I've been seeing in the RAID industry lately is that RAID is now the "cool thing to have" for the enthusiasts and gamers. As a result, what has been coming on the market at low prices is consumer-level RAID. In my opinion, that's an oxymoron.

Consumer-level stuff has bugs and idiosyncracies. Linksys routers screw up sometimes and have to be rebooted. Cisco 2811's don't. By the same token, Windows software RAID or a $50 RAID card that does all it's work in software will have bugs and idiosyncracies. A 3Ware card won't.

There have been dozens of threads lately of people using a motherboard RAID-5 and then doing something innocuous (updating motherboard BIOS, install new chipset driver, etc.) and all of a sudden the RAID is broken, won't get recognized, won't rebuild.

This isn't RAID. There's nothing redundant about these implementations - they suck, plain and simple. In fact, they're WORSE than a single drive because they lull the user into a false sense of security about the integrity of their data, when in reality they've added another buggy, consumer-level layer to break.

If you want to do RAID for the purpose of protecting your data against a hard drive failure, you have to have a RAID subsystem that works when crunch time comes. Having a working RAID-5 when all the drives are operational isn't the goal. Having a working RAID-5 when a drive has died is step 1 of the real test, and being able to rebuild the array after that is step 2. If your RAID solution can't do this, it's worthless in my opinion.

On my home server (running a 3Ware 9650SE with a 6-drive RAID-5), I actually had a drive fail DURING a migration from 3 disks to 4 disks. The 3Ware card correctly detected it, FINISHED the migration in a degraded state, and then rebuilt the entire array with a replacement drive afterwards, and didn't lose one bit of data. I will stake any amount of money that no motherboard RAID controller on the market would have handled that in any way, shape, or form. Data would be lost, and that's the end of it. And that's why the 3Ware card is $500. You get what you pay for.

understood and all. The problem i run here is that, yes, my data is important, but simply put, i feel i'd be better off investing in a newer system than in a single piece of hardware that costs that much.

I have 5 500gb hard drives now, not 3. i did this because on started having what windows called an "unrecoverable read error" on one of the drives, and another drive sounded like it was starting to have some sort of hardware break down. My goal is to get 1 very large hard drive setup with some sort of way to get up and running again quickly should one drive in the array fail. I do not have the money or time to backup 1.36 TB of data on a regular basis, the most critical stuff is already backed up, so RAID 5 will have to do to meet my other needs. Its mostly a media server right now, so i'm not worried too much about speed (no write access about 90% of the time, strictly read for all media, until i go thru and redo all the meta tags).

I don't game on a pc (i have consoles for gaming). I serve movies or music to every other laptop, PC and xbox in the house. thats it. The most critical stuff is backed up to dvd, but i don't really feel like dealing with a hard drive crash while doing a raid 0.

If you have 5 disk then you can do raid 6 and with that many disk software raid is BIG NO and on board software raid is better then windows software raid get a pci-e x4 or higher raid in a slot with pci-e x4 or more lanes or a pci-x one in a pci-x slot

okay, i guess no one saw the part about an Athlon XP 3200+.....i cant get a PCI-E card for anything...PCI-E wasn't around when this board was built.

sounds like i'm out of luck on all fronts then, eh?

You can get a 939 board and cpu for less then $200 with pci-e and keep your old ram.

My current systems:

Athlon XP 2100+
BioStar M7MIA Motherboard with ISA slot (for PC Comms Link), onboard IDE RAID and onboard normal IDE slots


Athlon XP 3200+
SOYO KT880 Dragon 2 v2.0 Motherboard with 4 on board SATA, 4 on board IDE (total of 12 devices can be hooked up)
2 dvd-rw
2 DVD-rom
2 gb ram
80 gb hard drive for system
3 500gb hard drives SATA for storage (1 was showing read errors)
2 500gb hard drives SATA for backup (trying to repair/replace drive with errors above)
and 1 hell of an AGP video card.

if i go up, i'll be going core 2 duo or QUad core. But for now, i'm stuck it seems

you can get a 939 board with 2 ide ports and 4 sata ports and you do not need 2 DVD-rw and 2 more DVD-roms in one system

AMOC,

If you are using this computer only to serve other computers around the house you may want to look into Windows Home Server. While WHS, do not use raid, it uses a different type of redundancy for data. Not only that but it will also run backups on all computers that it serves. Read more about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/p [...] fault.mspx.
I participated in the beta and I have to say that it is an amazing program. Not only that but it will work very well with older machines and is already available as an OEM package; priced around $200.

My only issue with OP's comments so far would be is that OP thinks that a hardware raid controller is going to tax the cpu more than software raid. The whole point of a hardware raid controller is to do the math required to put the bits of your data where they go instead of having the cpu do it every time.

I'm to lazy to read up on the specs, but even if it's an onboard raid won't it have it's own chip to do the math instead of depending on the cpu to do it all? What would be the purpose of having a board that supports 'raid' if it doesn't even do the math for you?

Joe the Dragon:

Sorry, I *DO* need more than 1 burner and more than one reader. each has a special function, and on the rare occasion when i need to do something with my system that regarding ripping or burning, i tend to need all of them running on independent channels. So no, for now, buying a new system to do this is 100% out of the question.

Stevie -

I'll look into WHS, however the system is MOSTLY a server....it's also my burning system, my Tunnel for my xboxes, and my bedroom media center.


mford:

There are certain (read: CHEAP) hardware RAID that do not do 100% of the needed work. THe ones i can afford right now fall into this range, from what i understand. I can't spend much more on this system.

Maybe what i need is being missed....


I need a LARGE hard drive (1TB+) to organize everything i have in logical ways. My media clocks in at over 500gb, so not all of it would fit on a single drive. My game system hacking and homebrew stuff falls between 250 and 600gb depending on what i'm doing, and how many revisions. My backup software and docs take up a lot of space too. Overall, i completely filled 3 500gb hard drives strung up together as a windows Dynamic drive (software RAID 0?).

this became a MAJOR problem when one of those drives started having problems. in order to replace that single drive, i had to back all the data off of 1.36TB of space. This required me to buy 2 more hard drives and borrow a third.

i've tested the drives in question and can't find a single thing wrong now. 1/3 of the data has been put back, but i'm still not anywhere closer to a solution than i was when the problem first started.


so...if i can't do a software RAID 5 or 6 solution because everyone tells me it either won't work or it's horrible, slow, etc.....does anyone have a solution in my price range that will allow me to use my current hardware (and potentially another piece of hardware costing around $50) to string together 4 hard drives as a single volume and have it in such a way that should 1 drive go down, i can swap it out for another?