Help with SATA RAID 0 configuration

zepizepi
edited May 2004 in Hardware
Greetings.

I recently had to start from scratch with my home-built system (long-story), and thought I had reconfigured my RAID 0 array correctly on two 120GB SATA-connected Seagates. Went through the requisite "F6" hell to load the right driver during XP installation, and installed Windows XP on a 20GB NTFS partition. When I boot up the system, it loads the promise controller and I receive the following configuration confirmation:

Promise 2+0 Stripe/RAID0 SCSI Disk Device

I also see this under the Device Manager under Disk drives "properties."

Finally, the question: When I utilize the Disk Management utility to partition my remaining space, I can see the 20GB NTFS partition (healthy), and my remaining space is 202+GB. That to me sounds like it's recognizing both drives and doubling the space rather than recognizing one striped drive in a RAID 0 configuration with 120 GB of space. Is this normal until I reformat the remaining space on the drives, or did I screw up somewhere when I rebuilt my array? I'm on a P4C800-E Deluxe Asus btw...

Sorry if I sound like an idiot on this one -- not exactly an expert but like to tinker. Thanks in advance for any help.....

john

Comments

  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    I can help here :)

    You have your drives configured as RAID-0 which effectively turns two drives into one BIG drive (striping data evenly across the set).. in your case, this is for performance = 2 x 120GB.

    It sounds like you are after a mirror RAID-1. This is where disk 1 is mirrored to disk 2. That would only show up 120GB and have the more defined reason for running RAID.. redundancy. So if disk 1 failed, disk 2 would kick in as it a mirror :)

    What sort of effect were you hoping to achieve with your RAID setup? :)
  • MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    Normal - RAID-0 does stripe the drives adding the total space of the 2 drives together to present only 1 large drive to the OS. It has no fault tolerance though, but it does increase your throughput from the disks.
  • zepizepi
    edited May 2004
    I was shooting for RAID 0, but it was my understanding that with that configuration my drive space would only show up as 120 GB (remember, I'm new). I'm probably just mixing that up with RAID 1. I was shooting for performance, as I back everything up to CD/DVD and take it out of the house -- the only TRUE redundancy. Anyway, I would assume that the following is correct then:

    -- RAID 0 with 2 120 GB drives will show 240 GB of available space and is a performance-based configuration with NO redundancy

    -- RAID 1 with 2 120 GB drives will show 120 GB of available space and is a fault-tolerant configuration that writes the same data to both drives

    Would also assume that based on what I posted in the first post was cool then? Thanks for the quick response guys -- much appreciated.

    john
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    zepi wrote:
    I was shooting for RAID 0, but it was my understanding that with that configuration my drive space would only show up as 120 GB (remember, I'm new). I'm probably just mixing that up with RAID 1. I was shooting for performance, as I back everything up to CD/DVD and take it out of the house -- the only TRUE redundancy. Anyway, I would assume that the following is correct then:

    -- RAID 0 with 2 120 GB drives will show 240 GB of available space and is a performance-based configuration with NO redundancy

    -- RAID 1 with 2 120 GB drives will show 120 GB of available space and is a fault-tolerant configuration that writes the same data to both drives

    Would also assume that based on what I posted in the first post was cool then? Thanks for the quick response guys -- much appreciated.

    john
    You have it sussed :)

    Id only add one thing to the RAID-0..

    If a member drive fails, everything on the drives is lost.

    That's it. You are good with your backup plan :)
  • zepizepi
    edited May 2004
    Thanks Dan -- much appreciated. And yep -- I know the risks, and some would call me stupid, but had luck with that config before and keeping my fingers crossed. Say a prayer....
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    zepi wrote:
    Thanks Dan -- much appreciated. And yep -- I know the risks, and some would call me stupid, but had luck with that config before and keeping my fingers crossed. Say a prayer....
    Ive been running RAID-0 for over two years on different brands of drives, with zero problems :)

    The only issue I have ever had was setting up an array with a faulty Western Digital Raptor. I wasn't sure what the problem was until I ran the data lifeguard app and it showed me that one of them as DOA. It has been replaced and Im typing on the rig that has the two of them in RAID-0 ;)

    If you have a proper backup regime, then there is no reason I can see why you shouldn't run RAID-0. I use Acronis True Image for nightly incremental backups onto a RAID-1 storage array. Works for me :)
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