Legit Reviews

Hello, all,

I have been busy on a big project for work, and my hard drive just failed. This has prompted me to wonder about Raid 1. Raid 1, if I am correct in thinking, takes everything that is on one drive, and copies it to the other one in the array in real time. My question is, if one of the drive fails, and I take both drives out of raid mode, then is it possible to boot from the one drive that did not fail, and is essentially a clone of the other one?

P.S. has anyone had problems with western digital? That was the brand of the drive that failed on me.

Thanks in advance, tekgek

I like WD drives. I've had two fail, both of which were replaced promptly, however.

RAID1 means you can keep working, swap out the failed drive and rebuild the array while working. Performance is reduced during this time but you can keep chugging, which is the point of RAID1. The drivers are identical clones of each other. For real-time production, a hardware solution (not "driver RAID," which is what you get with NVIDIA chipsets, for example) is probably a good idea. That can get expensive, tell me your budget for this and I can point you to something.

Wikipedia FTW!

my budget is either below or at 200 USD, and I need these drives yesterday, so I will be buying them from the store. Could you also point me towards a reliable brand? I was thinking seagate.

If you have that kind of budget, you're going to be using driver RAID (what comes with the motherboard) or Operating System RAID (Windows does software RAID of its own). Now, I've had nothing but problems with Seagates and a friend of mine had three Seagate externals die in a month. Although I know a lot of people have no problems whatsoever with their Seagate drives, I will not recommend them... My computer has nothing but Western Digitals in it. Be that as it may, if your budget only allows Seagates, go right ahead.

I only use Seagate drives.
Their warranty is for 5 years!

Touch wood, I've never had one fail.

Okay, got two seagate drives, stuck them in RAID 1, and am now installing windows. Thanks for the help.

One last question:

Will a winxp install run from a RAID 1 array?

Thanks,
tekgek

OK, a problem has ensued. When I have these two drives in Raid configuration, XP will not install, I just get a blue screen. What raid drivers would I need?

Did you get the f6 floppy option when installing Windows XP to install the RAID drivers that came with your mobo?

Yes. That will work? Will a USB floppy drive work?


Tekgek

tekgek wrote:Yes. That will work? Will a USB floppy drive work?


Tekgek

I would think so. I've never used a USB floppy. Laugh all you want but I still put a cheapo white box floppy in every machine I build.

Just remember that if you have a virus or spyware problem that the other hard drive will copy everything. Your still stuck with your problem. If you have a backup drive you will be fine. Just remember to backup your data.

@ vbironchef:
Thanks for the heads up, and I do get viruses about once in a blue moon, so that is always good to know. I try to back up my data to some other media as well.

But what about OS Raid? How would one do that, out of curiosity?

Thanks,
Tekgek

Never mind, I just need a floppy drive