Windows Software Raid

[cdru]

Does anyone have any familiarity with Windows built in software RAID functionality? I currently have two 200-GB drives setup in a RAID 0 array using a built in Promise FastTrak-100 IDE RAID adapter. It's worked well, but I'll be moving over soon to a newer system that won't have a RAID adapter and I'm too cheap to go buy one. I like the ability to see my two drives as a single drive as it makes my life simpler.

I've only ever been exposed to WinNT's RAID and then it was only RAID 1. I'm not necessarily worried about drive performance that spanning would give. Instead I would worry more about losing data. I'm however not willing to give up 200GB in a mirrored array for ideal reliability.

So here are my questions:
How reliable is Windows XP software raid implementation?

How much of a performance hit does Windows XP software RAID take for a typical setup using a striped array? spanned array?

If a stripped array drive goes south, I'm SOL with both drives. If I use a spanned array and either one of the drives fail, do I still lose the array? or do I just lose the data on that failed drive?

[nsafreak]

Does anyone have any familiarity with Windows built in software RAID functionality? I currently have two 200-GB drives setup in a RAID 0 array using a built in Promise FastTrak-100 IDE RAID adapter. It's worked well, but I'll be moving over soon to a newer system that won't have a RAID adapter and I'm too cheap to go buy one. I like the ability to see my two drives as a single drive as it makes my life simpler.

I've only ever been exposed to WinNT's RAID and then it was only RAID 1. I'm not necessarily worried about drive performance that spanning would give. Instead I would worry more about losing data. I'm however not willing to give up 200GB in a mirrored array for ideal reliability.

So here are my questions:
How reliable is Windows XP software raid implementation?

It's pretty reliable, seems to be written pretty well and works well overall


How much of a performance hit does Windows XP software RAID take for a typical setup using a striped array? spanned array?

It really depends upon your CPU as the software is going to be using it of course. Btw it's mirrored, not spanned. RAID level 0 (data striping) is going to make less of an impact than mirroring. If you're looking for fault tolerance as opposed to performance go with RAID 1.


If a stripped array drive goes south, I'm SOL with both drives. If I use a spanned array and either one of the drives fail, do I still lose the array? or do I just lose the data on that failed drive?

If you go with the mirrored array and one of the drives fail you do lose some data. However if parity is enabled then you can put in another drive of the same size and rebuild the array. To be honest though RAID controllers (unless you're going for a controller that can accomodate things like RAID 5) really don't cost all that much at all. Are you sure you can't afford to put up like $30 for a controller card?

[cdru]

Btw it's mirrored, not spanned. RAID level 0 (data striping) is going to make less of an impact than mirroring. Actually I was correct the first time. Windows will do striped (RAID 0), mirrored (RAID 1) as well as spanned (no RAID #) but many RAID controllers include it as it is similiar to RAID 0 without the stripes.

Are you sure you can't afford to put up like $30 for a controller card?Yes I can afford it. I'm just cheap though. It was just one more thing that I would have to get and if it wasn't necessary I wasn't going to bother with it. 1 more card means one more heat source, one more power drain, one more thing to fail, etc.

[nsafreak]

Heh I'm cheap too but if it impacts my performance enough I go with a card every time. I'm a gamer (and I'm guessing you're not) so running software RAID if I wanted to do RAID would be a no no for me.

[P Smith]

I would say - NO to software RAID ! Working many years with servers I have very bad experience with software implementation. My firm recommendation use ONLY hardware RAID controller cards. It will provide you reliable, fastest, robust way to utilize the technology.

[RichW]

Is it for a home computer? If so, the performance hit may not matter.

Software RAID didn't cut it on my server. It became a bottleneck when I upgraded to Gigabit Ethernet on our LAN (200 workstations). An Adaptec card solved the throuhput problem.

[P Smith]

I would add - it's nightmare when one of software RAID disks going down, very often that means longly downtime. :(