HELP: setting up RAID 1

[TiggerTigger]

Hi everyone,

Would someone please help me in setting up a RAID system?
And Thank you very much to Anandtech's staffs who did the RAID review.
I learned a lot there. but I am still not so clear about some issues...
Please clarify me..

I am trying to setup a RAID 1 in my system.
I have 2 HD, one for my OS and programs, one for my files (movies, mp3s..)
So, I want to mirror both drives. I know I need the identical drive.
In this case, do I need 2 RAID card to do it? I see some RAID cards said
they had 2, 3 or 4 channels. What is that? I am using Win2k prof., and
planning to switch the server version, so I can have my own FTP server.
So, how do I tell Windows to do the RAID after plugging in the card and the
drives? is there software the come with the RAID card to do the RAID process?
Please help me.

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

TiggerTigger

 

[le3tplaya]

well you need to set up the raid through the raid card. it will format and handle whatever raid you want (most cards support 0, 1, 0+1)

 

[TiggerTigger]

Thx.

Is there any RAID that can do Dual RAID 1?
if no card support Dual RAID 1, does it mean I have to get two RAID card?

Thanks

 

[NelsonMuntz]

I think I reponded to another one of your threads about this subject in another forum, but I didn't understand what you were trying to do. You don't really need a dual RAID 1 array. You need two RAID 1 arrays. This can be set up on basically any single controller, but it gets a little tricky. You can put up to four drives on a RAID controller and in your case you would need all four. You would then set up two RAID 1 (mirror) arrays in the controller BIOS. The tricky part comes in to how you put the four drives on the card (primary, secondary, master slave) and how this affects the drives if one fails. I would advise putting one of each of the drives as master on each channel and then putting the drive in the same array as slave on the OPPOSITE channel. This means your OS and programs drive and put it as primary master and then mirror it to secondary slave and put the files hard as secondary master and mirror it to primary slave. This way if you lost access to the secondary master drive it might cause both of the arrays to go critical, but you would still have full data through the primary channel and you could replace the secondary master drive and be up and running. BTW if you lost either of the slave drives only that array would go critical so it would be clear what failed and needed to be replaced. The worst situation would be if the primary master (boot) disk were to fail because then both arrays would go critical again, but in this case you would not be able to boot. Here you would want to switch the primary master and secondary slave disks (since they are identical) and then that would allow access to your data again. Just don't forget to change the master and slave jumpers on the backs of the drives. Anyway, this is what I think on the subject.

 

[TiggerTigger]

Hi NelsonMuntz,

Thank you very much.
your info is very useful. =)
there is difference between dual RAID and two RAID 1 ?? =|

In a typical single RAID 1 setup, the system will keep running even if one of the drives goes down. Right? I don't have to unplug the fail drive to make the system work again? when the replace drive is back. I can just put it back in w/o setup the RAID Bios again?

From what you wrote, it seems like a IDE drive RAID setup.
(I can use that in my other IDE system. =) thx. )
My drives are SCSI in this sytem. one is a 4GB SCSI and other is a 20GB SCSI. Is it harder to setup two RAID1 array with SCSI drives? is it possible to do it with one RAID card?

Thank you very much.

TiggerTigger

 

[NelsonMuntz]

I haven't run into RAID solutions for SCSI, so I don't know. If they make RAID for SCSI drives, then I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to do what you are suggesting. BTW, in a typical RAID 1 setup the array will continue to function with only one drive, but with IDE drives the slaves need their master counterpart and if you lost the primary master drive it could cause problems booting and trying to access the primary slave drive. I don't know much about SCSI so I don't know how it would react in this kind of situation. Sorry I couldn't help more.