Windows 7 Disk Management: spanned volume won't re-integrate missing disk

[Yousuf Khan]

A friend of mine has a desktop running Windows 7 Ultimate x64. In it,
there is a 1TB spanned volume consisting of 3 disks: (1) 200GB, (2)
300GB, & (3) 500GB. The middle disk, disk #2, suffered a temporary
communications failure, and disappeared from the volume all of a sudden.
After the reboot, the missing disk came back, SMART status shows it as
healthy (according to Hard Disk Sentinel, though it does mention that
there was a large number of communications errors on it, i.e. 64227
times). I went into Disk Management, but the volume still shows failed.
I attempted to reactivate the disks in the volume, but it didn't work. I
then attempted to go into the command-line utility, diskpart, and ran
the following command:

DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 186 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 279 GB 279 GB
Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 3 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 4 Online 111 GB 0 B
Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

As you can see, it shows one disk missing in the Dynamic volume, M0, but
that is supposed to be the same disk as Disk 1. Disk 0, 1, and 2
together made up the dynamic volume, but it's not recognizing Disk 1 as
part of the volume, and so it lists M0 as a missing disk in the volume.

While in diskpart, I attempted to "select disk M0" and "online disk",
and that didn't work. Then I tried to do the same with operation on Disk
1, it said that it was already online. How do I get it to recognize Disk
1 as the previously missing disk?

[Arno]

That is one reason not to trust Microsoft: Their engineering is still
3rd rated. What any sane RAID controller would have done here is
fail the whole array, but keep it assembled and allow you to
start it again when all drives are visible. What MS seems to have done
is kick the failed disk from the array, which does not make any sense
at all on non-redundant RAID arrays.

Your best bet is to find some tool that can assemble the spanned array
and works past MS stupidity.

That said: Any type of non-redundant RAID is only suitable as
temporary storage of non-critical data. In that case it can just
be re-created when something like this happens.

Arno

[Franc Zabkar]

On Fri, 04 Jan 2013 22:12:46 -0500, Yousuf Khan
<bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

>DISKPART> list disk
> Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
> -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
> Disk 0 Online 186 GB 0 B *
> Disk 1 Online 279 GB 279 GB
> Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
> Disk 3 Online 931 GB 0 B
> Disk 4 Online 111 GB 0 B
> Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

Disk 1 appears to have no partitions. That's why its free space
matches its size.

Try the following commands:

select disk=1
detail disk
list volume
select volume=x
detail volume

A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

Use a disc editor to examine Disk 1.

Here are several freeware editors:

DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery):
http://softdm.com/download.html

HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor:
http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd

Roadkil's Sector Editor:
http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P24/Sector%20Editor

I'd examine sector 0 on Disk 0 and Disk 2, plus the next few sectors,
and then compare them against Disk 1. I don't know anything about
dynamic volumes, but AFAIK each drive must store metadata that
identify all the other drives in the set.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

[Paul]

The dynamic disk database is duplicated across all (dynamic) disks. The question
would be, what happened to the dynamic disk database on the orphan disk ?

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc737048(WS.10).aspx

"Windows Server 2003 can repair a corrupted database on
one dynamic disk by using the database on another dynamic disk."

That's what I would have expected, based on the design intent of
having the database duplicated.

The orphan disk has two pieces of info. The MBR is specially marked,
to indicate the dynamic nature. Try a copy of PTEDIT32, and examine
what it shows on each drive. There should be something in the
MBR to indicate the disk is a dynamic disk. If the MBR was overwritten,
and the MBR on the orphan no longer indicates Dynamic, that's going
to "shoot you in the foot" right there. Not a leg to stand on.
A person could create that kind of damage, by using something like
TestDisk (which has an option to rewrite the MBR).

(Run as Administrator in Windows 7...)
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

(Partition type reference. To decode values seen in PTEDIT32)
http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

Once a disk MBR is marked dynamic, then that "1MB thing" near the
end of the disk, has to be intact.

It's possible the dynamic database, uses info like hardware serial numbers,
or something equally reliable, to allow re-importing something that
got damaged. There's bound to be a way to fix this.

I tried to find tools from this list, on my WinXP Pro, but
there's really nothing (except diskpart perhaps). And I'm not even
sure anything in diskpart is appropriate. There is a "repair"
command, but it's for something else.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc737610

*******

I built a Windows 7 VM, put a copy of Windows on the first virual
disk. Made two more virtual disks. Caused both of the empty virtual
disks to be Dynamic. Created a Spanned Volume across both of them.
(Two 16GB physical disks, become 32GB spanned E:). Shut down,
removed one disk of the spanned set, from the VM. Started Windows 7
again. In Disk Management, it shows the disconnected disk, and
shows it as "Missing". Right-clicking, there is a menu which
includes "reactivate". And in the help, some mention of "offline"
and "online" status.

OK, so shut down Windows 7 again, connect up the second disk of the
spanned set. Reboot Windows. And, I didn't even need that "Reactivate"
item. The second disk was automatically detected as present, and
E: came back up.

This exercise doesn't prove much, expect to suggest the orphan disk
lost something in its travels. Either the MBR is busted.
Or the 1 megabyte database has gone missing. The database, is supposed
to be the same on all disks. If you had five disk, split into a two
disk span set, and a three disk RAID5, the database file on each
disk is supposed to contain all of the info for the five disks. So
not only is the span recorded, so is the RAID5, and the same database
is supposed to be present on all the disks.

If you move the Dynamic Disk set to another computer, there's some
deal about "Foreign" and "Import". But if you start that kind of
thing (moving Dynamic Disks to another computer), that just
complicates the outcomes. If, as an amateur, I was trying to
repair it, the last thing I'd do is move the disks to another
computer (for fear of losing something, or say, the foreign import
overwriting something). Maybe "Foreign" and "Import" only affects
the local registry, but I don't know that for sure.

Just a guess,
Paul

[Yousuf Khan]

On 05/01/2013 4:28 PM, Franc Zabkar wrote:
> Disk 1 appears to have no partitions. That's why its free space
> matches its size.
>
> Try the following commands:
>
> select disk=1
> detail disk
> list volume
> select volume=x
> detail volume
>
> A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility:
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

Thanks, I'll give that one a shot when I next get to his place.

> Use a disc editor to examine Disk 1.
>
> Here are several freeware editors:
>
> DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery):
> http://softdm.com/download.html
>
> HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor:
> http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd
>
> Roadkil's Sector Editor:
> http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P24/Sector%20Editor
>
> I'd examine sector 0 on Disk 0 and Disk 2, plus the next few sectors,
> and then compare them against Disk 1. I don't know anything about
> dynamic volumes, but AFAIK each drive must store metadata that
> identify all the other drives in the set.

Oh, I'm hoping I'm not going to have to go that route. I'm hoping that
there's just some simple combination of commands in diskpart that can do
it for me. I know enough about the basics of diskpart, but some of the
more esoteric commands might be outside of my knowledge. But I don't
want to start using diskpart commands thinking they mean one thing, and
end up meaning something else.

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

On 05/01/2013 2:55 PM, Arno wrote:
> That is one reason not to trust Microsoft: Their engineering is still
> 3rd rated. What any sane RAID controller would have done here is
> fail the whole array, but keep it assembled and allow you to
> start it again when all drives are visible. What MS seems to have done
> is kick the failed disk from the array, which does not make any sense
> at all on non-redundant RAID arrays.
>
> Your best bet is to find some tool that can assemble the spanned array
> and works past MS stupidity.

I've posted this same question on Microsoft Technet, and so far not a
single response yet. It may be a very difficult case.

> That said: Any type of non-redundant RAID is only suitable as
> temporary storage of non-critical data. In that case it can just
> be re-created when something like this happens.

It's a home PC, we paid the extra price for the Win7 Ultimate for
features such as this. Symantec's Volume Manager is a bit too pricey for
this setting.

When I was running Solaris systems, I used to use the included Solaris
RAID software for quick and easy spanning and other functions when the
costs prohibited buying a Symantec license for such a small job. The
Solaris software was competent, if a bit less user-friendly or as fast
as Symantec's, but you could trust it to work right.

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

On 05/01/2013 5:22 PM, Paul wrote:
>
> I built a Windows 7 VM, put a copy of Windows on the first virual
> disk. Made two more virtual disks. Caused both of the empty virtual
> disks to be Dynamic. Created a Spanned Volume across both of them.
> (Two 16GB physical disks, become 32GB spanned E:). Shut down,
> removed one disk of the spanned set, from the VM. Started Windows 7
> again. In Disk Management, it shows the disconnected disk, and
> shows it as "Missing". Right-clicking, there is a menu which
> includes "reactivate". And in the help, some mention of "offline"
> and "online" status.
>
> OK, so shut down Windows 7 again, connect up the second disk of the
> spanned set. Reboot Windows. And, I didn't even need that "Reactivate"
> item. The second disk was automatically detected as present, and
> E: came back up.
>
> This exercise doesn't prove much, expect to suggest the orphan disk
> lost something in its travels. Either the MBR is busted.
> Or the 1 megabyte database has gone missing. The database, is supposed
> to be the same on all disks. If you had five disk, split into a two
> disk span set, and a three disk RAID5, the database file on each
> disk is supposed to contain all of the info for the five disks. So
> not only is the span recorded, so is the RAID5, and the same database
> is supposed to be present on all the disks.

Well, this is interesting, then I guess I am going to have to go in with
a disk editor on this thing afterall. As Frank Z. noted, the disk is
showing empty right now, when it should show that it is part of a
dynamic volume.

> If you move the Dynamic Disk set to another computer, there's some
> deal about "Foreign" and "Import". But if you start that kind of
> thing (moving Dynamic Disks to another computer), that just
> complicates the outcomes. If, as an amateur, I was trying to
> repair it, the last thing I'd do is move the disks to another
> computer (for fear of losing something, or say, the foreign import
> overwriting something). Maybe "Foreign" and "Import" only affects
> the local registry, but I don't know that for sure.

Yeah, I had seen some mention of importing disks, but I could not find
the information to indicate how to do it.

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf]

On Saturday, January 5, 2013 4:28:54 PM UTC-5, Franc Zabkar wrote:
> Disk 1 appears to have no partitions. That's why its free space
>
> matches its size.
>
>
>
> Try the following commands:
>
>
>
> select disk=1
>
> detail disk

DISKPART> detail disk

Maxtor 6L300R0 ATA Device
Disk ID: 49721FF3
Type : ATA
Status : Online
Path : 0
Target : 1
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1401)#ATA(C00T01L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

There are no volumes.

>
> list volume

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 Spanned 931 GB Failed
Volume 1 G DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 2 E Seag 1TB Da NTFS Partition 736 GB Healthy
Volume 3 D Seag 1TB Bo NTFS Partition 195 GB Healthy System
Volume 4 H System Rese NTFS Partition 100 MB Healthy
Volume 5 C SanDisk SSD NTFS Partition 111 GB Healthy Boot

> select volume=x
>
> detail volume

DISKPART> detail volume

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---

Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 2 Online 186 GB 0 B *

Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

Read-only : No
Hidden : No
No Default Drive Letter: No
Shadow Copy : No
Offline : No
BitLocker Encrypted : No
Installable : No

Virtual Disk Service error:
The object is in failed status.

> Use a disc editor to examine Disk 1.

I`ll download those later and post the results later.

Yousuf Khan

[miso]

Nothing I can say but ditto. These schemes should be as independent of
the OS as possible. In fact, make that as independent of the PC hardware
as possible. I was looking at a Datoptic port multipier
> http://www.datoptic.com/esata-hardware-raid-controller-spm394.html

I like the idea of it being driverless, so when my mobo fails, I'm not
screwed. In fact, if I use one, I'd probably buy a second eventually
just to have handy in the event the one I'm using croaks.

MS has been trying to abstract files as their OSs have progressed.
"Docuements" was bad enough, but "virtual store" is over the top. Stop
hiding the damn files!

[Arno]

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote:

> On 05/01/2013 2:55 PM, Arno wrote:
>> That is one reason not to trust Microsoft: Their engineering is still
>> 3rd rated. What any sane RAID controller would have done here is
>> fail the whole array, but keep it assembled and allow you to
>> start it again when all drives are visible. What MS seems to have done
>> is kick the failed disk from the array, which does not make any sense
>> at all on non-redundant RAID arrays.
>>
>> Your best bet is to find some tool that can assemble the spanned array
>> and works past MS stupidity.

> I've posted this same question on Microsoft Technet, and so far not a
> single response yet. It may be a very difficult case.

Just my point: This should be easy. On Linux mdadm,
mdadm --assemble --force <array name/uuid/component list/etc.>
does the trick. Easy to find, easy to use. May cause
data-corruption, but that is unavoidable when a disk
drops out of a non-redundant array without warning.

The other thing I found out recently when I wanted some
Win7 redundancy is that you cannot boot from a dynamic disk.
What the hell is the use of software RAID if you cannot
use it for the most important drive???

>> That said: Any type of non-redundant RAID is only suitable as
>> temporary storage of non-critical data. In that case it can just
>> be re-created when something like this happens.

> It's a home PC, we paid the extra price for the Win7 Ultimate for
> features such as this. Symantec's Volume Manager is a bit too pricey for
> this setting.

> When I was running Solaris systems, I used to use the included Solaris
> RAID software for quick and easy spanning and other functions when the
> costs prohibited buying a Symantec license for such a small job. The
> Solaris software was competent, if a bit less user-friendly or as fast
> as Symantec's, but you could trust it to work right.

Well, yes. Same with Linux mdadm (except the "pricey").
But with a three disk spanned array, you have about three
times the chance of something like this happening compared
to one disk. But you are right, ordinarily this should
be easy to repair and any possible corruption should be
limited to files being written at the time. Apparently
MS "upgraded" this to a real problem.

Arno

[Arno]

miso <mi...@sushi.com> wrote:

> Nothing I can say but ditto. These schemes should be as independent of
> the OS as possible.

If you mean "as independent of the concrete OS instance as possible",
I agree. On Linux I can recover a RAID array with any other not
too old Linux recovery CD, or on any other Linux PC, over any
other interface I like as long as I can get enough of the original
disks attached in some way so that the OS sees them.

OS dependency per se is not the issue, but being tied to a
specific PC is just stupid. And "stupid" is what I have
come to expect of MS. These people just do not get it and
consistently implement bad choices, because they think they
are so great that they do not need to look at what other
people have done. Organizational Dunning-Krueger effect.

> In fact, make that as independent of the PC hardware
> as possible. I was looking at a Datoptic port multipier
>> http://www.datoptic.com/esata-hardware-raid-controller-spm394.html

> I like the idea of it being driverless, so when my mobo fails, I'm not
> screwed. In fact, if I use one, I'd probably buy a second eventually
> just to have handy in the event the one I'm using croaks.

Get that second one with the first one and make sure you can
actually recover this way. From my personal experience,
hardware RAID implementations can be very, very stupid.
And make sure you can do DISK SMART monitoring over this
thing so you have some early warning if a disk goes bad.

> MS has been trying to abstract files as their OSs have progressed.
> "Docuements" was bad enough, but "virtual store" is over the top. Stop
> hiding the damn files!

MS wants an easy experience for their users. Nothing wrong
with that, except that computing cannot be made easy today. So
they implement problems waiting to happen instead that screw
the user once some tiny thing works not quite as MS expected
it to work. Which happens att the tome with today's PCs, also
because MS engineering quality is still pretty bad.

Arno

[Yousuf Khan]

On Saturday, January 5, 2013 4:28:54 PM UTC-5, Franc Zabkar wrote:

> Disk 1 appears to have no partitions. That's why its free space
>
> matches its size.
>
>
>
> Try the following commands:
>
>
>
> select disk=1
>
> detail disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---

Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 2 Online 186 GB 0 B *

Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

Read-only : No
Hidden : No
No Default Drive Letter: No
Shadow Copy : No
Offline : No
BitLocker Encrypted : No
Installable : No

Virtual Disk Service error:
The object is in failed status.

> Use a disc editor to examine Disk 1.

[Franc Zabkar]

On Sat, 5 Jan 2013 18:27:54 -0800 (PST), Yousuf <yjk...@gmail.com> put

finger to keyboard and composed:

>DISKPART> list disk

> Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
> -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---

> Disk 0 Online 186 GB 0 B *
> Disk 1 Online 279 GB 279 GB

> Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB

> Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

>DISKPART> detail volume
>
> Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
> -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
> Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
> Disk 2 Online 186 GB 0 B *
> Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *

How is it that Disks 0 and 2 appear to have swapped places? Does it
matter?

[miso]

There is a thread on Tom's Hardware. The poster had 20 drives using 4 of
those boxes. He said he can rebuild on the fly. I'm not ruling out going
Drobo or other COTS solution. But I have more confidence in a system
that I build myself because I understand it.

The port multiplier in theory is OS independent. However, you do need to
be able to talk SATA, so the mobo needs a driver. But this is borderline
pedantic.

Not only does MS hide the damn files, but in win7, they made searching
take a giant leap backwards. I use that Voidtool "everything" program.
It is so good, I don't bother indexing.

[Char Jackson]

On Sat, 05 Jan 2013 17:32:55 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com>
wrote:

>It's a home PC, we paid the extra price for the Win7 Ultimate for
>features such as this. Symantec's Volume Manager is a bit too pricey for
>this setting.

I realize you're well beyond the shopping phase, but I would have
recommended DriveBender <http://www.drivebender.com/> as an alternative to
MS drive spanning. I'm currently running it on a couple of systems and
haven't had any problems yet.

One system consists of 15 physical drives grouped as a single 28TB logical
volume, and the second system has 9 physical drives grouped as a single 13TB
volume. If a drive is removed from the pool, all data on all drives remains
readable.

--

Char Jackson

[Arno]

miso <mi...@sushi.com> wrote:
[...]

> There is a thread on Tom's Hardware. The poster had 20 drives using 4 of
> those boxes. He said he can rebuild on the fly. I'm not ruling out going
> Drobo or other COTS solution. But I have more confidence in a system
> that I build myself because I understand it.

I agree. I just advise toget that spare controller and make
sure swapping it out works as expected.

> The port multiplier in theory is OS independent. However, you do need to
> be able to talk SATA, so the mobo needs a driver. But this is borderline
> pedantic.

Ah, sorry. What I meant is that you are hardware dependent in
the sense that you are dependent on this specific controller
type. As long as you have a spare, you can recover the array
from a broken controller on any other hardware. But well
implemented software RAID is not slower or less reliable and
does away with the need for any spare hardware. If you have
that spare controller, (and it being driverless is definitely
a huge advantage!), the difference is small. If you do not
have it and then find out that it is out of production or
otherwise hard to get when your main controller fails, the
difference is huge...

> Not only does MS hide the damn files, but in win7, they made searching
> take a giant leap backwards. I use that Voidtool "everything" program.
> It is so good, I don't bother indexing.

Indexing is another of these broken "features". On my laptop
it made everything choppy until I turned it off. Never
needed it anyways, I know where I keep stuff.

Arno

[Yousuf Khan]

On 05/01/2013 5:22 PM, Paul wrote:

Okay, PTEdit worked!!! The partition table on this disk was showing Type
0 "empty", so I used Ptedit to turn them into Type 42 (Dynamic Disk). I
also had to fill in the remaining fields in that partition table by
hand: Starting Cylinder/Head/Sector = all zeros; Ending Cyl/Head/Sector
= 1023/254/63; Sectors Before = zero; Sectors End = Total Sectors -
2111. I found these other parameters out by comparing them to the other
disks in the dynamic volume. After doing all of that, I just rebooted,
and the volume came roaring back to life all on its own after the
reboot. Ran a chkdsk, it found no problems with the structure of the
filesystem. Checked several of the files on the disk, they all seemed to
have proper integrity. So it was just the partition table that was hosed
and nothing else!

Yousuf Khan

[Ken Blake]

On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:25:23 -0600, Char Jackson <no...@none.invalid>
wrote:

> One system consists of 15 physical drives grouped as a single 28TB logical
> volume, and the second system has 9 physical drives grouped as a single 13TB
> volume.

Wow! You have *big* systems. Are these home systems or are they used
in a business somewhere?

[Yousuf Khan]

On 07/01/2013 1:25 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
> I realize you're well beyond the shopping phase, but I would have
> recommended DriveBender<http://www.drivebender.com/> as an alternative to
> MS drive spanning. I'm currently running it on a couple of systems and
> haven't had any problems yet.
>
> One system consists of 15 physical drives grouped as a single 28TB logical
> volume, and the second system has 9 physical drives grouped as a single 13TB
> volume. If a drive is removed from the pool, all data on all drives remains
> readable.

Are these all simple spans, or does this software also do software
RAID-5 or other RAID's?

Yousuf Khan

[Paul]

Good catch!

Now, what erased the MBR ???

Paul

[Franc Zabkar]

On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:55:27 -0500, Paul <nos...@needed.com> put

finger to keyboard and composed:

>Good catch!

Ditto.

>Now, what erased the MBR ???

I suspect that the user accepted Windows' invitation to initialise the
drive. Many users do this without realising that "initialisation" is
data destructive, probably because the term sounds innocuous.

[miso]

In theory, these RAID volumes should follow a standard. That doesn't
seem to be the case in practice. I still have a RAID 5 array stashed
away that I'm going to try to recover some day. I had a mobo fail and it
used a fake raid. The RAID10 could be recovered in another PC without
issue, but not Raid 5. I tried to recover it with Pared magic, but it
just couldn't put the array back together I had a hackup, but not
totally up to date.

There are FreeNAS proponents that prefer to do the RAID completely in
the OS.

[Char Jackson]

Home systems.

Both systems are just about out of capacity so I'm watching HDD prices with
the idea that the 15-drive system (16 drives if you include the OS) can be
expanded to 24 drives and the 9-drive system (10 with the OS) can be
expanded to 13 drives. By then, both systems will be physically out of room
and it's either time for an additional server or piecemeal replacement of
2TB drives with bigger units.

--

Char Jackson

[Char Jackson]

On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:56:47 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com>
wrote:

Drivebender is simple spanning, (they call it pooling, as in older versions
of Windows Home Server). You can designate any number of folders for
duplication and Drivebender will ensure that the two copies are always on
different physical disks, but if you need more than that you have to add it
yourself. SnapRAID or FlexRAID make nice additions, for example.

--

Char Jackson

[Arno]

miso <mi...@sushi.com> wrote:
[...]

> In theory, these RAID volumes should follow a standard. That doesn't
> seem to be the case in practice.

Sort-of but not quite. The on-disk format is sort-of standardized,
which basically just stripe size and order variable. But the
metadata (disk ID, array ID, flags for all kinds of things, etc.)
is not at all standardized.

> I still have a RAID 5 array stashed
> away that I'm going to try to recover some day. I had a mobo fail and it
> used a fake raid. The RAID10 could be recovered in another PC without
> issue, but not Raid 5. I tried to recover it with Pared magic, but it
> just couldn't put the array back together I had a hackup, but not
> totally up to date.

> There are FreeNAS proponents that prefer to do the RAID completely in
> the OS.

I have been using Linux software raid for 10 years without problems,
almost all running 24/7 and one installation was the two fileservers
for a computing cluster.

Arno

[Yousuf Khan]

On 07/01/2013 9:39 PM, Franc Zabkar wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:55:27 -0500, Paul<nos...@needed.com> put
> finger to keyboard and composed:

>> Now, what erased the MBR ???
>
> I suspect that the user accepted Windows' invitation to initialise the
> drive. Many users do this without realising that "initialisation" is
> data destructive, probably because the term sounds innocuous.

That's a possibility, but he didn't mention doing that, but I'll ask him
directly. He did mention trying the "Reactivate" command in Disk
Management, which of course didn't work. Could Reactivate call an
Initialize? Judging by how quickly & automatically things came right
back after the reboot when the partition table was intact, I would've
expected no need to even touch any of these commands, so either they got
run before the reboot (in a desperate attempt to get things back) and
ended up causing the problem after a reboot, or something truly external
erased the partition table perhaps during the communications problem to
that disk.

Yousuf Khan

[Ken Blake]

On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 01:05:39 -0600, Char Jackson <no...@none.invalid>

wrote:

> On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:43:21 -0700, Ken Blake <kbl...@kb.invalid> wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:25:23 -0600, Char Jackson <no...@none.invalid>
> >wrote:
> >
> >
> >> One system consists of 15 physical drives grouped as a single 28TB logical
> >> volume, and the second system has 9 physical drives grouped as a single 13TB
> >> volume.
> >
> >
> >Wow! You have *big* systems. Are these home systems or are they used
> >in a business somewhere?
>
> Home systems.
>
> Both systems are just about out of capacity so I'm watching HDD prices with
> the idea that the 15-drive system (16 drives if you include the OS) can be
> expanded to 24 drives and the 9-drive system (10 with the OS) can be
> expanded to 13 drives. By then, both systems will be physically out of room
> and it's either time for an additional server or piecemeal replacement of
> 2TB drives with bigger units.

Wow, again! You must have lots of very big files--video files perhaps.

If you add up everything on all three of my drives here, it comes to
something around half a terabyte. Add in the drives in the other three
systems in my home--my wife's machine, my laptop, and my Windows Home
Server--and the total is around 1.5 TB.

[Franc Zabkar]

On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 08:27:31 -0500, Yousuf Khan
<bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

>He did mention trying the "Reactivate" command in Disk
>Management, which of course didn't work. Could Reactivate call an
>Initialize?

I don't know, but I would think not. Microsoft's technical articles
aren't really helpful in this regard, though. I like to see what
happens at the bits-and-bytes level, but Microsoft rarely goes that
deep.

[David Brown]

Linux md raid can work with disks from many types of Intel fake raid,
and might be able to put your array together again. No guarantees, of
course, but if you want your data back it is worth investigating. If
the raid5 disks are small enough, then you can make images of them to
another disk (or two) and use the image files when trying to assembly
them with mdadm - then you have no risk no matter what you do wrong.

>
> There are FreeNAS proponents that prefer to do the RAID completely in
> the OS.
>

A great many Linux, BSD and Unix systems use software raid - there are
many reasons why it is often preferably to hardware raid. And pretty
much every low or medium price NAS system you can buy uses either Linux
or BSD with software raid.

In the windows world, fake raid or hardware raid is the norm, but in the
*nix world software raid is very common.

[Paul]

Franc Zabkar wrote:
> On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 08:27:31 -0500, Yousuf Khan
> <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:
>
>> He did mention trying the "Reactivate" command in Disk
>> Management, which of course didn't work. Could Reactivate call an
>> Initialize?
>
> I don't know, but I would think not. Microsoft's technical articles
> aren't really helpful in this regard, though. I like to see what
> happens at the bits-and-bytes level, but Microsoft rarely goes that
> deep.
>
> - Franc Zabkar

Reactivate might exist for the purpose of handling a "hot inserted"
span or RAID member. Like plugging a SATA drive into a SATA backplane
with the power on.

If you're cold-booting with all members restored
in a set, it likely puts the mess back online all by itself.

There's no reason for "Reactivate" to delete an MBR. The
only thing that would do that, might be "convert Dynamic to Basic",
complete with its own warning dialogs etc. As a Dynamic to Basic
conversion is going to remove the protective 0x42 value and
allow the MBR to hold regular partition type entries.

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

"42 Windows 2000 dynamic extended partition marker"

Paul

[Arno]

David Brown <david...@removethis.hesbynett.no> wrote:
[...]

> A great many Linux, BSD and Unix systems use software raid - there are
> many reasons why it is often preferably to hardware raid. And pretty
> much every low or medium price NAS system you can buy uses either Linux
> or BSD with software raid.

> In the windows world, fake raid or hardware raid is the norm, but in the
> *nix world software raid is very common.

I was wondering about the reasons for a long time. By now
I have come to the conclusion that the typical Unix Admin
is expected to be able to handle software RAID configuration,
while the typical Windows admin is at best expected to be
able to plug in disks.

Arno

[Yousuf Khan]

On 08/01/2013 5:30 PM, Paul wrote:
> Franc Zabkar wrote:
>> On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 08:27:31 -0500, Yousuf Khan
>> <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:
>>
>>> He did mention trying the "Reactivate" command in Disk Management,
>>> which of course didn't work. Could Reactivate call an Initialize?
>>
>> I don't know, but I would think not. Microsoft's technical articles
>> aren't really helpful in this regard, though. I like to see what
>> happens at the bits-and-bytes level, but Microsoft rarely goes that
>> deep.
>>
>> - Franc Zabkar
>
> Reactivate might exist for the purpose of handling a "hot inserted"
> span or RAID member. Like plugging a SATA drive into a SATA backplane
> with the power on.

The Windows 7 version (even for Ultimate) of Disk Management doesn't
include any RAID beyond spanning, striping, or mirroring. I found that
out the hard way, when I tried to create some RAID5 partitions, and
found it all greyed out. Looked it up and saw it was only for Windows
Server. I'm not sure I'd trust the Disk Management on Server editions
either, considering the stuff we went through here.

> If you're cold-booting with all members restored
> in a set, it likely puts the mess back online all by itself.

I think this might have contributed to the mess here. He knew enough to
reboot the machine, but he didn't consider doing a complete shutdown and
restart to re-initialize the peripherals and power supply too. He was
simply doing warm reboots, and it wasn't fixing anything. Then
eventually panic and desperation set in, and he may have done something
without completely realizing the implications.

However, I might be completely off-base in suspecting human error here,
I did ask him today if he used the "Initialize" command, and watched him
recreating his steps, he didn't even know where to find it, so it's not
likely he hit it by accident.

> There's no reason for "Reactivate" to delete an MBR. The
> only thing that would do that, might be "convert Dynamic to Basic",
> complete with its own warning dialogs etc. As a Dynamic to Basic
> conversion is going to remove the protective 0x42 value and
> allow the MBR to hold regular partition type entries.

Now, let's take a hypothetical situation where the Windows 7 version of
Disk Management *does* support software RAID5, or maybe even just
mirroring. If a disk dies and you replace it with a new disk, would the
Reactivate be used to resync the new drive to the existing volume? If
that's the case, then maybe it would have to call "Init" to setup the
new drive as a dynamic drive?

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

Somebody ought to port the Linux md raid to Windows one day. I doubt it
would be nearly as capable as it is on Linux, because they won't have
access to some of the low-level information about Windows to allow it to
work with Windows boot disks, but at least it'll work with secondary
data disks.

Yousuf Khan

[DevilsPGD]

In the last episode of <eogne8h5rhmsbml2g...@4ax.com>,

Char Jackson <no...@none.invalid> said:

>Home systems.
>
>Both systems are just about out of capacity so I'm watching HDD prices with
>the idea that the 15-drive system (16 drives if you include the OS) can be
>expanded to 24 drives and the 9-drive system (10 with the OS) can be
>expanded to 13 drives. By then, both systems will be physically out of room
>and it's either time for an additional server or piecemeal replacement of
>2TB drives with bigger units.

What sort of cases/enclosures are you using? I've got a couple boxes
that are reaching their limits due to physical room in the case and I'm
eyeballing replacements but haven't found anything that isn't horribly
over-priced yet.

My goal is 12-16 SATA drives per case, although +2 would be ideal so
that I can have a couple drives for the OS and fully fill my 2x8 SATA
RAID cards to capacity.

I was looking at
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147165 and
actually had one on order, but I needed a pair and they got discontinued
after I ordered one, so I cancelled the order.

--
The nice thing about standards, there is enough for everyone to have their own.

[Yousuf Khan]

On 06/01/2013 4:47 PM, Franc Zabkar wrote:
> On Sat, 5 Jan 2013 18:27:54 -0800 (PST), Yousuf<yjk...@gmail.com> put
> finger to keyboard and composed:
>
>> DISKPART> list disk
>> Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
>> -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
>> Disk 0 Online 186 GB 0 B *
>> Disk 1 Online 279 GB 279 GB
>> Disk 2 Online 465 GB 1024 KB
>> Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *
>
>> DISKPART> detail volume
>>
>> Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
>> -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
>> Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB *
>> Disk 2 Online 186 GB 0 B *
>> Disk M0 Missing 0 B 0 B *
>
> How is it that Disks 0 and 2 appear to have swapped places? Does it
> matter?

Yeah, sorry that was another complication, this friend had just recently
installed an SSD, and we were dual-booting between it and the old HDD
boot, from time to time. So depending on whether we were booted through
the HDD or the SSD, the disk numbers changed position. I listed the
original disk listing when booted through the HDD, but I didn't feel
like waiting around for an HDD boot everytime, so began working through
the SSD instead. But don't worry, I kept the disks straight in my head. :)

In fact he was a little concerned that the SSD had something to do with
this span disk failure, because it happened so soon after installation
of the SSD. But I told him they're not related. However, I do think that
maybe the addition of the SSD might have been related through power
supply sharing issues, which I didn't tell him about.

Yousuf Khan

[Char Jackson]

On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:29:24 -0800, DevilsPGD <booga...@crazyhat.net>
wrote:

>In the last episode of <eogne8h5rhmsbml2g...@4ax.com>,
>Char Jackson <no...@none.invalid> said:
>
>>Home systems.
>>
>>Both systems are just about out of capacity so I'm watching HDD prices with
>>the idea that the 15-drive system (16 drives if you include the OS) can be
>>expanded to 24 drives and the 9-drive system (10 with the OS) can be
>>expanded to 13 drives. By then, both systems will be physically out of room
>>and it's either time for an additional server or piecemeal replacement of
>>2TB drives with bigger units.
>
>What sort of cases/enclosures are you using? I've got a couple boxes
>that are reaching their limits due to physical room in the case and I'm
>eyeballing replacements but haven't found anything that isn't horribly
>over-priced yet.

One is a Norco RPC-450B, advertised as being able to hold just 10 drives,
but the standard trick is to remove the optical drive bay and install a
third HDD bay, increasing its internal capacity to 15 3.5" drives plus a
2.5" drive mounted in a card slot on the mobo.

<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219030>

At some point, I intend to replace the 450B (or build another system
entirely) with a Norco 24-drive chassis such as the RPC-4220 or 4224.

<http://www.newegg.com/Norco-Technologies-Inc/BrandStore/ID-10473>

My other case is a Lian-Li tower case, not sure of the model, that natively
holds 8 3.5" drives, but with creative use of adapters I currently have 10
drives installed and see a viable way to get to at least 13 or 14.

>My goal is 12-16 SATA drives per case, although +2 would be ideal so
>that I can have a couple drives for the OS and fully fill my 2x8 SATA
>RAID cards to capacity.
>
>I was looking at
>http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147165 and
>actually had one on order, but I needed a pair and they got discontinued
>after I ordered one, so I cancelled the order.

From a distance, I could confuse that Rosewill with my Norco.

--

Char Jackson

[DevilsPGD]

In the last episode of <c1gpe8t5itc6pc1q8...@4ax.com>,

Char Jackson <no...@none.invalid> said:

>My other case is a Lian-Li tower case, not sure of the model, that natively
>holds 8 3.5" drives, but with creative use of adapters I currently have 10
>drives installed and see a viable way to get to at least 13 or 14.

Cool, thanks. I don't mind using adapters to turn external bays into
3.5" bays, but I'd love to find something that doesn't need it.

>From a distance, I could confuse that Rosewill with my Norco.

Yeah. They have a non-hotswappable one that is even closer, but I do
like the idea of hotswappable bays since my RAID cards are all hotswap
capable/ready at this point.

OTOH, I guess there's not really a lot of space for innovation when it
comes to packing a lot of drives in a case with a motherboard at the
rear.

[Char Jackson]

On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 20:44:36 -0800, DevilsPGD <booga...@crazyhat.net>
wrote:

>In the last episode of <c1gpe8t5itc6pc1q8...@4ax.com>,
>Char Jackson <no...@none.invalid> said:
>
>>From a distance, I could confuse that Rosewill with my Norco.
>
>Yeah. They have a non-hotswappable one that is even closer, but I do
>like the idea of hotswappable bays since my RAID cards are all hotswap
>capable/ready at this point.

Some of the Norco cases are hot swappable, but I use Drivebender as a
pooling service and it gets testy when a pooled volume disappears.

>OTOH, I guess there's not really a lot of space for innovation when it
>comes to packing a lot of drives in a case with a motherboard at the
>rear.

IIRC, Google just says to heck with the case and the AC power supply,
letting the mobo, drives, and DC supply just lie there naked. I suppose that
could be an option, but I like the finished look of having that stuff in a
case.

--

Char Jackson

[DevilsPGD]

In the last episode of <h64qe8d3en2pomkv3...@4ax.com>,

Char Jackson <no...@none.invalid> said:

>>OTOH, I guess there's not really a lot of space for innovation when it
>>comes to packing a lot of drives in a case with a motherboard at the
>>rear.
>
>IIRC, Google just says to heck with the case and the AC power supply,
>letting the mobo, drives, and DC supply just lie there naked. I suppose that
>could be an option, but I like the finished look of having that stuff in a
>case.

That's not an option where I live, at least for the most part. We have
one machine mounted in a cabinet behind the TV, but other than that,
it's not practical.

[David Brown]

I don't think that would be easy. Linux is very modular, with block
devices working in layers with clear interfaces. Much of the power of
things like md raid (and lvm, disk encryption, network block devices,
etc.) is that they build upon one or more block devices, and provide a
block device interface to the next layer. In this way, a Linux system
can take a number of /relatively/ simple parts and combine them together
into a complex whole. Windows is made in a very different way,
attempting to be a single complete system. You can't add extra parts
into the system because there is no clear modular and layered system to
work with.

It would perhaps be possible to have some aspects of md raid supported
in Windows - maybe even as the "secondary data disks" you mention. But
it would be very much a second-class client, in the same way that there
is some limited support for ext2/3 access from Windows. Part of the
issue, of course, is licensing - you can't mix the GPL'ed md code with
non-GPL'ed Windows driver code too closely, and neither side would
consider changing licenses!

Perhaps the best way to get md raid on Windows would be to use something
like coLinux.

[David Brown]

On 09/01/13 01:10, Yousuf Khan wrote:
> On 08/01/2013 5:30 PM, Paul wrote:
>> Franc Zabkar wrote:
>>> On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 08:27:31 -0500, Yousuf Khan
>>> <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:
>>>
>>>> He did mention trying the "Reactivate" command in Disk Management,
>>>> which of course didn't work. Could Reactivate call an Initialize?
>>>
>>> I don't know, but I would think not. Microsoft's technical articles
>>> aren't really helpful in this regard, though. I like to see what
>>> happens at the bits-and-bytes level, but Microsoft rarely goes that
>>> deep.
>>>
>>> - Franc Zabkar
>>
>> Reactivate might exist for the purpose of handling a "hot inserted"
>> span or RAID member. Like plugging a SATA drive into a SATA backplane
>> with the power on.
>
> The Windows 7 version (even for Ultimate) of Disk Management doesn't
> include any RAID beyond spanning, striping, or mirroring. I found that
> out the hard way, when I tried to create some RAID5 partitions, and
> found it all greyed out. Looked it up and saw it was only for Windows
> Server. I'm not sure I'd trust the Disk Management on Server editions
> either, considering the stuff we went through here.
>

I know that XP Pro only supports RAID0 and RAID1 out of the box, and you
need a server version to support RAID5. But support for RAID5 can be
"added" to XP by a few registry tweaks. Maybe the same applies with
Win7? Of course, such tweaks are unlikely to be supported by MS...

[Franc Zabkar]

On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:20:49 -0500, Yousuf Khan

<bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:

>Okay, PTEdit worked!!! The partition table on this disk was showing Type
>0 "empty", so I used Ptedit to turn them into Type 42 (Dynamic Disk). I
>also had to fill in the remaining fields in that partition table by
>hand: Starting Cylinder/Head/Sector = all zeros; Ending Cyl/Head/Sector
>= 1023/254/63; Sectors Before = zero; Sectors End = Total Sectors -
>2111. I found these other parameters out by comparing them to the other
>disks in the dynamic volume.

I confess that I know nothing about dynamic disks but ISTM that the
CHS numbers don't make sense.

Firstly, sector numbers begin counting from 1, not 0.

C/H/S values of 1023/254/63 would suggest that the partition size is
about 16 million sectors, not 2111. I realise that these values are
used when the partition size is greater than 8GB, but that doesn't
seem to fit with the rest of the partition table data.

Furthermore, 2111 = 63 + 2048, so I'm wondering whether there is a
1MiB partition beginning at sector 63. Sector 63 is where the first
traditional MBR partition begins, not LBA 0.

In fact the following URL has this to say:

"If a partition table entry of type 0x42 is present in the legacy
partition table, then W2K ignores the legacy partition table and uses
a proprietary partition table and a proprietary partitioning scheme
(LDM or DDM). As the Microsoft KnowledgeBase writes: Pure dynamic
disks (those not containing any hard-linked partitions) have only a
single partition table entry (type 42) to define the entire disk.
Dynamic disks store their volume configuration in a database located
in a 1-MB private region at the end of each dynamic disk."

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

[Yousuf Khan]

Possibly, however this is Microsoft's official response to why RAID-5 is
greyed out in Disk Management:

"New RAID-5 Volume..." greyed out in Disk Management
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itproinstall/thread/a1851e42-c705-4558-920c-30ba7c6cf080

So I guess RAID-5 requires even more expenditure to get enabled, beyond
Windows 7 Ultimate. You need to go straight to Windows Server.

But the following thread even mentions that even if I had Windows
Server, I probably wouldn't really want to use the software RAID-5 on
it, because it's so slow:

Establishing a software RAID5 with Diskpart seems to take DAYS with no
end in sight - what gives?
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverfiles/thread/df7228a9-98d3-431a-b530-f513b6141608

Yousuf Khan

[Yousuf Khan]

On 12/01/2013 3:49 PM, Franc Zabkar wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:20:49 -0500, Yousuf Khan
> <bbb...@spammenot.yahoo.com> put finger to keyboard and composed:
>
>> Okay, PTEdit worked!!! The partition table on this disk was showing Type
>> 0 "empty", so I used Ptedit to turn them into Type 42 (Dynamic Disk). I
>> also had to fill in the remaining fields in that partition table by
>> hand: Starting Cylinder/Head/Sector = all zeros; Ending Cyl/Head/Sector
>> = 1023/254/63; Sectors Before = zero; Sectors End = Total Sectors -
>> 2111. I found these other parameters out by comparing them to the other
>> disks in the dynamic volume.
>
> I confess that I know nothing about dynamic disks but ISTM that the
> CHS numbers don't make sense.
>
> Firstly, sector numbers begin counting from 1, not 0.

Yup, sorry, I made a mistake when writing that one, I was operating from
memory since I wasn't near the original system. The actual values for
that should be:

Starting Cylinder/Head/Sector = 0/1/1

The Ending CHS values are right though.

> C/H/S values of 1023/254/63 would suggest that the partition size is
> about 16 million sectors, not 2111. I realise that these values are
> used when the partition size is greater than 8GB, but that doesn't
> seem to fit with the rest of the partition table data.

No, I'm not saying that the partition size is only 2111 sectors, I'm
saying that you need to _subtract_ 2111 sectors from the total number of
sectors and put that value in here, let me rewrite it on its own line, thus:

Sectors End = Total Sectors - 2111

So if you have 1,000,000 sectors total in your disk, then you would put
997,889 sectors in this field, i.e. 1000000 - 2111 = 997889.

2111 sectors is about equal to 1 MB, which would be just about the right
size for the metadata database for the dynamic disks.

> Furthermore, 2111 = 63 + 2048, so I'm wondering whether there is a
> 1MiB partition beginning at sector 63. Sector 63 is where the first
> traditional MBR partition begins, not LBA 0.

Probably nearly right, except I'm thinking that the 63 + 2048 is around
the end of the disk, rather than around the beginning.

Yousuf Khan

[Paul]

The recipe for that, was shown on Tomshardware many moons ago.
This is for WinXP. Editing executables might not pass OS
scrutiny (i.e. signing) on a newer OS.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windowsxp-make-raid-5-happen,925-2.html

Paul

[David Brown]

Many people see the terms "Windows" and "reliable storage" as things
that don't belong together in the same sentence!

There are several reasons why someone would want to use raid. You might
want to combine smaller disks into a larger storage unit, or into a
faster storage unit. You might want it to keep your data safe in the
event of hardware failures occurring between backups (because raid is
/not/ a substitute for backups!). But the big reason in many cases is
to minimise down-time - you want to keep the system up and running even
if there is a failure, rather than having to rebuild things and restore
from backups.

Windows idea of software raid cannot give you this. In particular, you
can't use the software raid for the system disk. So if you are
interested in minimising down-time, Windows raid is useless.

And judging from people's experiences with Windows software raid (note -
there will be a bias here, because people post on the internet when they
have problems rather than when everything works fine), it is neither
particularly fast nor particularly reliable.

So the only reason to look at Windows software raid at all is for
putting together large storage areas where you are not concerned about
the data (or at least have good enough backups). And for that purpose
you might as well use RAID0 instead of RAID5.

Maybe MS has figured out that anyone looking for anything else with raid
on Windows will use either fake raid or hardware raid, so there is no
need to keep it in the system.

>>
>>
>> Yousuf Khan
>
> The recipe for that, was shown on Tomshardware many moons ago.
> This is for WinXP. Editing executables might not pass OS
> scrutiny (i.e. signing) on a newer OS.
>
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windowsxp-make-raid-5-happen,925-2.html
>
> Paul

So it was a little more than just a few registry tweaks. The same
technique might be possible for Win7, if someone figures out the details
- but would anyone want to?

[BillW50]

On 1/13/2013 4:56 AM, David Brown wrote:
> There are several reasons why someone would want to use raid. You might
> want to combine smaller disks into a larger storage unit, or into a
> faster storage unit. You might want it to keep your data safe in the
> event of hardware failures occurring between backups (because raid is
> /not/ a substitute for backups!). But the big reason in many cases is to
> minimise down-time - you want to keep the system up and running even if
> there is a failure, rather than having to rebuild things and restore
> from backups.

I don't find those solutions very satisfactory. So in the early 80's, I
came up with what I thought was a near perfect solution. While many talk
about and making a big deal about software backups, I think that isn't
good enough. Maybe because I am an electronic engineer, I see all kinds
of flaws here.

So while software backups are only partially helpful, I find hardware
and software cloning to be a far better solution. And no service plan on
Earth for any amount of money is better than what I have. And one of the
key factors that everybody seems to miss is to buy hardware in at least
in pairs.

Say for example, right now something happens with this computer I am
typing on. It could be anything you can think of. Power supply, fan,
CPU, RAM, hard drive, keyboard, monitor, motherboard, etc. failure. And
none of it matters because in 2 seconds I am back up and running again.

If the hard drive is at least ok, I just pop it out and slip it into
another M465 and I am up and going again. If the hard drive is partly or
the whole problem, I just grab the latest clone (I keep about 11 clones
for this machine alone) and I am off to the races in 4 seconds. And I
have it automatically synced with my latest data files.

Not only is this method more reliable than anything I have ever seen,
but it makes troubleshooting a real snap. As sometimes a problem pops up
and you generally have to jump through a number of hoops to see if a
problem is actually hardware or software. Not here, just pop the drive
in another machine and if the problem is still there, it will be
software. If gone, it's the hardware. This is a bit over simplified of
course, but it basically works this easy.

And no matter what the problem turns out to be, no big deal. As I have
spares of both software and hardware. And there is no real pending rush
to repair anything. Take your time if you like. As I have 7 more
functioning spares of this laptop alone and 11 hard drives that all have
to fail before I would be in a really big rush. And quite frankly, I
never see that day coming. ;-)

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 4GB - Windows 8