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Windows Forum / Windows XP / Hardware / March 2005Raid array
Is there any problems to running a raid using external hard drives? can win xp pro run a raid or would i have to get 3rd party software? If you have an external raid array it is probably SCSI and you should use a bus mastering SCSI controller that supports RAID. If it's not SCSI you should rethink using RAID. Kerry Brown KDB Systems > Is there any problems to running a raid using external > hard drives? can win xp pro run a raid or would i have to > get 3rd party software? Hello Do some research on Raid before going down that road, that would better help you, research it Al > Is there any problems to running a raid using external > hard drives? can win xp pro run a raid or would i have to > get 3rd party software? To run Raid 1, it is best to have dual processors, it does slow down your computer. You need SCSI or SATA card with Raid capability. I believe the new Intel motherboards can be configured to run SATA Raid. Raid 1 is good for companies that have very important data that have to be mirrored every minute. If one drive fails, then you can boot from the other. (accounting small firm is good example) Otherwise using drive backup (mirroring) software that backup once a day, is cheaper and better way to go. There is Raid, 1, 2, 3 etc. each is different, anything above Raid 1 is for enterprise and large servers use. > Is there any problems to running a raid using external > hard drives? can win xp pro run a raid or would i have to > get 3rd party software? <Otherwise using drive backup (mirroring) software that backup once a day, is cheaper and better way to go..> Any recomendations (products)on this set up? On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 10:20:39 -0800, anonymous wrote: > <Otherwise using drive backup (mirroring) software that > backup once a day, is cheaper and better way to go..> > > Any recomendations (products)on this set up? RAID does not change the need for backups - RAID 1/5 is for drive fault tolerance and performance. Backups are for saving data, never confuse the two.  Signaturespam999free@rrohio.com remove 999 in order to email me >RAID does not change the need for backups - RAID 1/5 is for drive fault >tolerance and performance. Backups are for saving data, never confuse the >two. I am not planning on working off of the raid drives. I will still be working off my internal hard drives, but I would be using the raid drives as a back up to my working drives. the raid is in case one of those drives fail. it is not a permanent solution i am looking for, just something to get me through the next 12 months or so. >>RAID does not change the need for backups - RAID 1/5 is >>for drive fault tolerance and performance. Backups are for saving [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > those drives fail. it is not a permanent solution i am looking for, just > something to get me through the next 12 months or so. Buy a good quality tape drive. Signaturespam999free@rrohio.com remove 999 in order to email me I use Casper XP http://www.fssdev.com Be sure to set the secondary drive partition to Active (Bootable). After the first backup, remove primary drive, set slave to primary, see if it boots up OK. I use a task scheduler to run Casper once a day. C:\Program Files\Future Systems Solutions\Casper XP\CasperXP.EXE /COPY C: D: /Y > <Otherwise using drive backup (mirroring) software that > backup once a day, is cheaper and better way to go..> > > Any recomendations (products)on this set up? > To run Raid 1, it is best to have dual processors, > it does slow down your computer. > You need SCSI or SATA card with Raid capability. > I believe the new Intel motherboards can > be configured to run SATA Raid. There are inexpensive add-in SATA and IDE solutions from Promise. I use the Promise SX6000 with 6 x 250GB IDE drives on many small servers. RAID 1 works fine with those small controller cards with a SINGLE CPU, even using software RAID 1 it does not consume much in the way of cpu cycles - look at perfmon some time if you don't believe me. I would only run RAID (any type) on external drives if it was SCSI based, in a single chassis and the entire thing was on a quality UPS. Signaturespam999free@rrohio.com remove 999 in order to email me > RAID 1 works fine with those small controller cards with a SINGLE CPU, > even using software RAID 1 it does not consume much in the way of cpu > cycles - look at perfmon some time if you don't believe me. It does have spikes of high memory usage when data is changed. Hard to catch, but you can notice it in a busy server in a small network. 3.0 CPU with 1 GB memory and two SCSI 7200 RPM hard drives. >> To run Raid 1, it is best to have dual processors, >> it does slow down your computer. [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > I would only run RAID (any type) on external drives if it was SCSI based, > in a single chassis and the entire thing was on a quality UPS. >> RAID 1 works fine with those small controller cards with a SINGLE CPU, >> even using software RAID 1 it does not consume much in the way of cpu [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > in a small network. > 3.0 CPU with 1 GB memory and two SCSI 7200 RPM hard drives. I run RAID-1 for all OS partitions on all servers. With SCSI, SATA, IDE, controller or soft RAID-1, I don't see more than a few K and I can't attribute that to the mirror. Single CPU, Xeon, 2GB, RAID-1 c=20GB, D=230GB, 75 users What do you consider HIGH memory? Signaturespam999free@rrohio.com remove 999 in order to email me >Single CPU, Xeon Xeon are made for server boards. All Intel Xeon compatible server boards have dual processors. Plus its much faster than a non-server CPU. >>> RAID 1 works fine with those small controller cards with a SINGLE CPU, >>> even using software RAID 1 it does not consume much in the way of cpu [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > > What do you consider HIGH memory? > Xeon are made for server boards. > All Intel Xeon compatible server boards have dual processors. > Plus its much faster than a non-server CPU. Um, the Xeon boards are NOT all Dual CPU boards. There are other vendors than Intel that make single and Dual Xeon boards. I'll still stick with my RAID-1 not loading memory or the CPU to any significant amount based on workstation and server setups we done with controller or soft based RAID. Signaturespam999free@rrohio.com remove 999 in order to email me Would like to get your thoughts on this product... http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=704941 I would be running this on a PC, not a server. I am looking for backup with some parity. I have files that I can't loose, but don't have the time to burn them onto DVDs all the time. > Would like to get your thoughts on this product... > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > can't loose, but don't have the time to burn them onto > DVDs all the time. Joe This looks like a reasonable product. From you previous posts it sounds like you want something that will mirror your internal drive. You could set this up via a software mirror between your internal drive and a volume on the external RAID. You may find too much of a performance penalty because the external drive enclosure uses Firewire or USB 2.0. You may have to use a disk cloning package like Norton Ghost and image your drive at the end of the day, or schedule it for a time when you are not using the PC. A better solution would be a internal SCSI drive mirrored to an external SCSI drive. I've never actually tried setting up a software mirror to a external Firewire or USB drive so I would be interested to hear how it works if you try it. As mentioned in other posts RAID gives you fault tolerance but is not a backup solution. What happens in the event of a fire, flood, theft, file system corruption from a virus, or just accidentally deleting the wrong files? Kerry Brown KDB Systems >This looks like a reasonable product. From you previous posts it sounds like >you want something that will mirror your internal drive. You could set this [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] >Kerry Brown >KDB Systems You are close. The drives would be used to back up files. I have 3 internal hard drives. 1 for OS and applications, 2 for data storage (mostly video/images/DVD authoring). I need a way to back up the files to another drive in case my internal drives go down. I work within a hospital but don't have enough network drive space to back them up. The hospital wants 7,000 dollars for 500gb of additional server space from our department. I think that is a too much money considering I can buy 2TB for half that. I was going to just buy a 1TB external hard drive to archive the files to, but thought this would be a more secure solution. I am not going to work off of the drives. I am just going to copy files to them. I thought that if one of these drives should break I can get another one and have the others rebuild it (the reason for the Raid). I usually sit down once a year and back up everything to DVDs but it takes a lot of disks and DVD burning is still pretty slow. I am not really concerned about the speed of the drives. They do however make a SCSI version for about 400 dollars more, which I could get. > You are close. The drives would be used to back up files. > I have 3 internal hard drives. 1 for OS and applications, [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > the drives. They do however make a SCSI version for about > 400 dollars more, which I could get. Depending on your system software mirroring to USB/Firewire may cause your whole system to slow down during drive access. Normally mirroring causes slightly slower writes and faster reads. Using Firewire/USB I think reads and writes would both be slower because of the overhead of USB/Firewire. For backup or imaging you would have to give up the time to create the image and your second set of data will only be as current as the image but there will be no slowdown for normal read/write operations. Technology is evolving so fast there it's hard to keep up and know what works in the real world. I'm going on theory alone. Let us know what you try and how it works. Kerry Brown KDB Systems One method of backup is not enough. 1) You need a software that backup your important data to multiple devices at different intervals. http://www.backtec.com/minman.htm Is a good one. 2) Back to DVD and take it home daily in case of theft or fire. 3) Backing up your hard drive is a good extra power to you. MinuteMan Data Backup is very useful to backup your important data, such as your Favorites, Email, Notes, customer information, your personal documents, pictures, etc. It would have been a catastrophe for me without it, because somewhere along the line a drive would take a dive, data gets lost, or get infected with a virus. I do rotary backups of the same backups to network computer, local drive, CD-R/DVD-R, and external USB drives. Using a drive image software for if my drive froze is great but can't rely on it 100%. Actually it could fail you on the day you need it. Because it has failed making a mirror, because you are having problems with the current drive. An addition of Raid 1 (requires two hard drives) is more power to you, for if the master drive took a dive, then you can boot from the second drive instantly. But remember to separate your important data from your operating system and what software is installed in it, because all that can be re-installed. If you do mirror to an external drive: Use a USB drive kit with a drive of your choice that has been partitioned and set as bootable. Mirror to it, take it out of the drive kit enclosure, install it in the computer, and see if it boots up. Not all mirroring software can guarantee to make an external drive bootable. >>This looks like a reasonable product. From you previous > posts it sounds like [quoted text clipped - 47 lines] > the drives. They do however make a SCSI version for about > 400 dollars more, which I could get. > Would like to get your thoughts on this product... > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > can't loose, but don't have the time to burn them onto > DVDs all the time. Since it's FireWire I personally would never install it on any computer for a client. If you just want a large RAID array, why does it have to be external. You can easily purchase a nice server type case - Chenbro - with room for 12 drives and dual 550W PSU's and then run whatever motherboard you want. This is an IDE based ATA100 RAID controller that has it's own CPU and Memory - it handles 6 x IDE drives and screams. I've built a lot of 1.3TB servers around this card. http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=349864 If you really want to get the Firewire unit, get the same unit in SCSI and then get a good Adaptec SCSI card. One thing to mention - RAID IS NOT A BACKUP METHOD, it's a fault tolerance method. If you just want a backup method, get a tape drive and tapes. Signaturespam999free@rrohio.com remove 999 in order to email me |
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