Software RAID 5 array under Windows XP

timothyw

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In case you guys haven't seen it, tomshardware have an article on how to modify windows XP to enable RAID 5 support:
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20041119/index.html
Sounds good for, say, a Media Center edition PC with a sackload of storage... or maybe a temporary raid 5 storage solution that you can later migrate to a dedicated Windows Server 2003 box. Speed not exceptional, but certainly fast enough for a home media server :thumbsup:
 
I'd be VERY wary of hacking these system files to achieve something M$ clearly doesn't support .. at any time in the future they could update them and eliminate the possibility of their being hacked again, then what would one do?

While I'm perfectly happy to twiddle with registry settings using things like TweakUI which M$ at least acknowledge exist, patching system software is something else entirely IMHO.
 
Well, I wouldn't recommend putting this on your desktop and then moving all your irreplaceable home movies there immediately, don't get me wrong; but on the other hand, if you want a large filestore for DVDs (which of course you have sat on your shelf should MS get involved) or a convenient store for recorded tv programs, neither of which i'd classify as irrecoverable, then this could well be a good solution for you.
Even if the worst came to the worst, and microsoft DID remove this hidden functionality from XP, then you could still get to your partition by installing windows server 2003, or moving them into a new machine with server 2003 installed- which I'd suggest as the better long term solution.
 
drummerjohn said:
OR buy the new MSI Nforce4 mobo which has RAID5 as standard!!!
And now NVidia have a P4 license nForce4 will be coming to an Intel mobo near you soon. :thumbsup:
 
timothyw said:
Well, I wouldn't recommend putting this on your desktop and then moving all your irreplaceable home movies there immediately, don't get me wrong
Well if they're replaceable then why 'waste' a disk with RAID 5, IMHO it'd be more sensible to either save the cost of a disk or have an extra one in a RAID 0 array.
 
Why not just buy a Highpoint rocketraid card, they have sata or ata in 4 way or sata 8 way for £60ish or £120ish, Scan have them on today only every week or two, its still software raid but if you destroy your operating system it doesn't hose the drives. I've got three of these cards in my server, 2 4 way ata's and an 8 way sata, 16 drives in total (+ a boot drive) running off a 2.4 celeron with xp pro.
 
KraGorn said:
Well if they're replaceable then why 'waste' a disk with RAID 5, IMHO it'd be more sensible to either save the cost of a disk or have an extra one in a RAID 0 array.
Because if you're putting it on a hard disk in the first place then surely you want it somewhere more convenient, and its hardly convenient having to re rip all your data when one drive out of your array fails- the odds of which do of course multiply- for the extra expense of a single hard drive. If you want a terabyte of storage then frankly I think you'd be mad to put it on Raid 0- as i know my time is worth more than that extra expense- even if RAID 0 is a supported feature of win XP.
Personally, i think this is a great 'stepping stone' from a desktop to a dedicated media server- try out having multi room dvd streaming from your desktop, and if you like it, great, build a server running Windows Server 2003 to sit in the loft, and move your fully intact raid array into it without any mucking about necessary. If uncle bill should decide that he doesn't want you running RAID 5 on your XP install.. then you've got your excuse to build that server anyway... but frankly i don't think he'll risk breaking windows XP disk management with a quick fix (which will **** a LOT of people off) to stop a few enthusiasts tinkering- if its much of a worry to you then wait a few weeks and see if Tomshardware get politely asked to take the article down... I know i plan to before i start tinkering :devil:
 
I had a drive fail this week, 4 moth old maxtor, swapped it with a spare, it took a day to rebuild the ata raid and all back to normal, no loss or agro, drives gone off to maxtor rma'd.

Much less greif than re-ripping. 300gb drives are £120 + vat now, the odd one to a raid5 is expendable to my time for re-ripping.
 
JohnS said:
I had a drive fail this week, 4 moth old maxtor, swapped it with a spare, it took a day to rebuild the ata raid and all back to normal, no loss or agro, drives gone off to maxtor rma'd.

Likewise, our raid 5 set lost a disc, and brought back the new one into the set while all the time continuing to work for reading and writing. (took several hours to sync the new disc)

Bit of a waste of time on a desktop from a performance point of view, but great for reliability.
 
just remember software RAID hammers CPU performance!
 
My Highpoint controllers consume 80% of my 2.4 celeron when writing to any one array, the server does very little else though other than serve files and I'm unlikly to need to write to more than one array at a time. Reading from mulitple arrays with many streams hardly uses any cpu.
 

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