Can I install windows XP on software RAID-0?

yes you can, but understand that RAID 0 has no fault tolerance.   So if you have two harddrives and a RAID 0, if you lose a drive, you lose the other's data as well.

RAID 1 on the other hand on two drives is a mirror.   One drive's info is duplicated on another drive.  If one fails, you still operate on a single drive.

no, the os cannot be installed on software RAID 0 - you can setup other partitions as RAID 0, just don't put anything important on it.

Hmm, .   Maybe I am missing a point here.. can you explain why not or show me a reference.  Thanks!?

Thank you... because I don't know much about raid... sorry for my question again... top_rung talkign about raid-0 has no fault tolerance... how about the NTFS basic type I am using now? it has fault tolerance?? Is Raid better than NTFS?? or it's not comparable...? Actually I want to improve my computer performance, I am thinking to use an new hard drive and use part of it to raid-0. So I can put my page file here. I heard it's faster this way than using NTFS system... is that true?

your file system is NTFS.  Your RAID system is an array of disks.  Don't confuse the two..   You will use NTFS on the drives (as opposed to Fat, Fat32), and configure drives in either a RAID 0 or RAID 1.    

If you want the fault tolerance, you should buy a Hardware controller and use  RAID 1.

RAID info...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

I should have said fault tolerance, and better performance.  It is better with hardware than software.

Thank you top_rung. So the basic type NTFS I am using now, it has no fault tolerance right? and do you know the page file setting I was talking about above?

NTFS as opposed to FAT or FAT32 offers better reliability, security and such.  It doesn't have fault tolerance in this sense.  For example, if you have one harddrive formatted in NTFS, and it dies, where is your fault tolerance (at a physical level that is)?  However, let's say that you have two harddrives formatted in NTFS and connected to a hardware RAID controller using RAID 1, and one dies, the other continues on.  

Now using the software RAID by utilizing dynamic disks, you can gain fault tolerance still by use of dynamic volumes.   Here is more info on that...

http://www.techimo.com/articles/index.pl?photo=149



About the page file, the recommendation it to move it off of the drive that contains your system partition to improve performance.  Ideally, off of the physical drive to another drive such as another data drive for instance.  If you only had two harddrives, and did a RAID 1 on a controller card as an example, you couldn't move the page file to another physical drive because in essence you only see one drive (e.g. If you buy 2 100GB harddrives and use a  RAID 1, the capacity is only 100GB)


I hope I am not muddying the waters.

thank you top_rung. Your explanation is very good. So to move page file to a different physical hard drive, the hard drive I can use it's only the basic type? there is no way I can use the page file on a raid storage? for example raid-0?

It should be noted that there is no supported redundant form of RAID in Windows XP.  ONLY in Windows Server versions.

Key notes about the page file...

-If you have two harddrives, one system and one data, put the page file on teh data drive.
-If you have a RAID 0 as your only setup (system and data), page file remains on it. No choice;)
-If you have a system drive plus another set of drives using RAID 0(aka stripe set) put the page file on the stripe set.
-If you have a system drive plus another set of drives a RAID 1 for data let's say, don't put the page file on the RAID drives because some fault-tolerant setups suffer from slower data writes (there are afterall multiple drives to write to).

Does that help?

RAID combines two or more disks so that they appear as one.  Simple as that.  With software RAID, you can combine 2 or more areas of free space so that they appear as one.

Then you have the file system - which the disk OR RAID volume is formatted as.

The pagefile can go on any disk.

Think of it like this:

Hard Disks are file cabinets.  A RAID 1 is like having TWO file cabinets, each are ALWAYS kept up to date so that if one is stolen or blows up, the other has an EXACT copy of the information you had.  A RAID 0 splits up documents and puts alternating pages into each file cabinet - this way, two people can retrieve the file faster than one (the analogy begins to break down here... but for the mirror it works well).  If one of those file cabinets is stolen, then the other only has every other page (say odd or even) as a result, the information is virtually useless.  That is why you NEVER put important information on a RAID 0.

The File System (NTFS, FAT, etc) is the method the files are stored with.  In the file cabinets, do you put things in order of name?  date entered?  subject?  what file system do you use to organize your files?

XP will work fine with any hardware RAID available if a driver for XP exists.  HOWEVER, XP does not offer the ability to use any kind of redundant RAID (where one disk can be lost and the data is still 100% accessible.

Because RAID volumes are drive letters, there's no problem putting the pagefile on a RAID.  RAID 0 is fine for this...

Thank you for leew and top_rung. I learned a lot of good bbasic knowledge of RAID. Lastly, just want to confirm 1 thing.... so no matter what kind of raid 0,1...5 . I always need at least 2 physical hard drive to make raid to work?

Yes.  RAID = REDUNDANT Array of Inexpensive Disks - you can't have redundancy without at least 2 disks... though again, technically, RAID 0 is not a true RAID because there is no redundancy, just a performance increase.

Hi, thank you guys for your patient and helping me. I am also trying to learn more through reading some articles on internet. I got another question here, if you have time could you please help me out again? Thank you.

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/23079654/windows-2003-server-with-software-raid.html