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Stability of Windows RAID 1?
Hello all,
a question nregardgint MS Windows software RAID 1 implementation.
How stable it is?
And what about disaster recovery - can other win computers read fallen Windows RIAD 1 member drives?
I have an old server to manage and limited resources, so I wanted to migrate DATA to a software raid array.
Thank you!
a question nregardgint MS Windows software RAID 1 implementation.
How stable it is?
And what about disaster recovery - can other win computers read fallen Windows RIAD 1 member drives?
I have an old server to manage and limited resources, so I wanted to migrate DATA to a software raid array.
Thank you!
Asked:
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1 Solution
How asked how stable it is, I'm saying that I wouldn't recommend it due to the fact that it isn't particularly good.
Firstly you can't access the data until the OS is up and running since it's software based, attaching the disks to another machine and then accessing the data is possible.
Plug the disks in, get into windows, open up disk management and right click and then rescan disks. That will then bring up the software RAID array.
However this is a terrible idea and windows software RAID isn't very good. It's slow, you can't access the array without windows (No chance of a disk scrape either) and RAID1 for data is pointless.
Does that answer your question better? :D
Regards
Alex
Firstly you can't access the data until the OS is up and running since it's software based, attaching the disks to another machine and then accessing the data is possible.
Plug the disks in, get into windows, open up disk management and right click and then rescan disks. That will then bring up the software RAID array.
However this is a terrible idea and windows software RAID isn't very good. It's slow, you can't access the array without windows (No chance of a disk scrape either) and RAID1 for data is pointless.
Does that answer your question better? :D
Regards
Alex
RAID1 simply mirrors the data from a hdd to the other.
Windows's implementation is as good as any other soft/fake implementation.
It's stable. Didn't had disks "jump out of RAID", like on some on-board controllers.
You can remove one hdd from the mirror and read the data in another computer.
RAID1 is NOT used for DR, it's for reliability: your server will continue to run even when one of your hdd fails.
As an added benefit, you'll have much faster reads (since the system can read from 2 different hdds at the same time).
HTH,
Dan
Windows's implementation is as good as any other soft/fake implementation.
It's stable. Didn't had disks "jump out of RAID", like on some on-board controllers.
You can remove one hdd from the mirror and read the data in another computer.
RAID1 is NOT used for DR, it's for reliability: your server will continue to run even when one of your hdd fails.
As an added benefit, you'll have much faster reads (since the system can read from 2 different hdds at the same time).
HTH,
Dan
The increase in read speeds is marginal and that would only be on a hardware based raid controller, software based is still going to be horribly slow.
Software based RAID 1 is not going to be slower than single disk reads.
The penalty you're referring to is on writes.
Here's an article from someone who took the time to test: http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=429
The penalty you're referring to is on writes.
Here's an article from someone who took the time to test: http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=429
Sorry but
http://kmwoley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/image-thumb.png
and
http://kmwoley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/image-thumb2.png
They both show that the raid is slower on writes and MARGINALLY faster on reads.
http://kmwoley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/image-thumb.png
and
http://kmwoley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/image-thumb2.png
They both show that the raid is slower on writes and MARGINALLY faster on reads.
I said: Software based RAID 1 is not going to be slower than single disk reads.
you said: the raid is [...] MARGINALLY faster on reads.
I said: The penalty you're referring to is on writes.
you said: the raid is slower on writes
So, we're arguing on... ?
you said: the raid is [...] MARGINALLY faster on reads.
I said: The penalty you're referring to is on writes.
you said: the raid is slower on writes
So, we're arguing on... ?
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As for software raid, if it were on a UNIX box then I'd say go for it... Windows... Meh, probably not.