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Software RAID on laptop with WinXP?

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Alan Cobb

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May 25, 2002, 1:19:34 PM5/25/02
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Hi,

I've got a Dell i8K with two 48GB internal
hard drives. (The second one can be mounted
in the "media bay" where the floppy normally
goes). I'm using WinXP Pro.

Anyone tried software RAID (striping) in a
laptop with two on-board drives? Does WinXP
allow it on a laptop? How much did it speed up
performance? I want to speed up booting and
software development builds.

Two downsides I can see:
1) With the second hard drive installed, there
won't be a place for the floppy. So no <simple>
way to boot Ghost for image backups.

2) Decrease in reliability: If either drive fails
everything is lost.

But if RAID 0 came close to doubling disk speed,
I'd be happy.

Thanks,
Alan Cobb

Mark Mayhle

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May 26, 2002, 6:57:57 AM5/26/02
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alancobbR...@jps.net (Alan Cobb) wrote in message news:<3cefc5f4...@news.easynews.com>...

> I've got a Dell i8K with two 48GB internal
> hard drives. (The second one can be mounted
> in the "media bay" where the floppy normally
> goes). I'm using WinXP Pro.
>
> Anyone tried software RAID (striping) in a
> laptop with two on-board drives? Does WinXP
> allow it on a laptop? How much did it speed up
> performance? I want to speed up booting and
> software development builds.

I don't think you can boot from an XP striped set.

Mark Mayhle

Alan Cobb

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May 26, 2002, 1:55:43 PM5/26/02
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Hi Mark,

So I guess when I've seen postings about RAID
speeding up booting, it must be (desktop) systems
using hardware RAID controller boards?

Alan Cobb

Mark Mayhle

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May 27, 2002, 5:55:05 AM5/27/02
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alancobbR...@jps.net (Alan Cobb) wrote in message news:<3cf12195...@news.easynews.com>...

> Hi Mark,
>
> So I guess when I've seen postings about RAID
> speeding up booting, it must be (desktop) systems
> using hardware RAID controller boards?

Yes, AFAIK, a hardware controller (or at least a controller with a
bootable BIOS, like a Promise FastTrak) is necessary.

Alan Cobb

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May 27, 2002, 2:39:39 PM5/27/02
to
Mark,

If the two hard drives in the laptop had multiple
partitions, could I boot from one normal partition
and then have the software raid operating
on two other partitions, one on each drive?

BTW: According to the following articles, all versions of
W2K actively prevent you from creating dynamic disks on
laptops. No dynamic disks means no software RAID apparently.
http://support.microsoft.com/view/tn.asp?kb=309043

http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q232463

I suppose you might be able to trick or patch the disk
management console into thinking it wasn't on a laptop,
but that's probably going a bit far :).

Alan Cobb

Mark Mayhle

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May 28, 2002, 5:27:02 AM5/28/02
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alancob...@THISjps.net (Alan Cobb) wrote in message news:<3cf27c4b...@news.easynews.com>...

> Mark,
>
> If the two hard drives in the laptop had multiple
> partitions, could I boot from one normal partition
> and then have the software raid operating
> on two other partitions, one on each drive?

This is certainly possible on a desktop machine. Whether it's
prevented on a laptop, as you describe below for Win2K, I don't know.

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