Windows XP software RAID 0

[gaviota]

Hello,

After reading an article in Tom's Hardware page about software RAIDs in Windows 2000/XP, I decided to give it a shot and set up 2 old 40GB hard drives in a Windows XP RAID 0 array. One disk is a Samsung and the other a Maxtor. I set up the array without any problems, and performance is very good (31,917 in Sandra 2002).

What bothers me is that after I created the array both disks are displayed as "Healthy (At Risk)" in the Computer Management window, which makes me think the array is about to crash. Are all software RAID 0 arrays displayed as being "at risk", or is there something wrong with mine?

 

[Stain]

At risk means that Windows had trouble accesing the array at some point. That could mean that the array is about to crash! Under Disk Management right click the volume and select reactivate volume, that should fix the problem, if not then I wouldn't be keeping important data on that volume if I were you.

You can read more about it in Disk Management - Troubleshooting.

 

[ejsmith2]

Hmmmmm.

Just out of curiousity, do you have those two drives on seperate channels?

And are they masters, or slaves?

 

[gaviota]

I can't reactivate the volume because its already active. It works fine, I dont get any errors when I use it, and I even run an error check and no errors are found. But its reported as "Healthy(At Risk)" by Windows' Computer Management.

Both drives are in the same IDE Channel, jumpers are set to cable select on both drives.

 

[ejsmith2]

Ok.

Here's the deal.

You need to get those two drives on seperate channels. Doesn't matter if they are master or slave, but they need to be on seperate channels.

Make sure you copy all info off it before you go flipping around cables. You never know when you might have to compromise, or XP will take a gigantic sh*t; right on your head when you least expect it to...

 

[Stain]

Putting them on seprate channels is worth a shot but I don't think it will fix the problem. I have both my software raid drives on the same cable with no problems. You might get a little performance if you seperate the drives but I dought anything else will happen.