Setting up Raid1

[TripperJoe]

I'm trying to get a mirror working in Windows Server 2008 on my NF4 motherboard. Everything seems okay in the bios.

-The OS is loaded on a single 100gb hdd
-The Mirror detects and reports as "healthy - 500gb"

But when I load into windows, I see two separate drives in disk management. I've loaded the latest XP nForce drivers (since there are no 2008 drivers listed) but it still fails to properly detect the array.

 

[Nothinman]

Whatever drivers you're loading are just the base controller drivers, you need to find the RAID drivers since the RAID is actually done in software in those drivers. You might be better off just using Win2K8's software RAID instead of the NF4 stuff.

 

[RebateMonger]

Yeah. I'm building a new (personal) SBS 2008 box shortly and I'm probably going to just use Windows software RAID 1. I'm not the world's biggest fan of Dynamic Disks, but as long as you have good backups, it's certainly as good an option as NVidia RAID. And there's much less chance of having driver problems with NVidia's standard controller drivers than with their RAID drivers.

Originally posted by: TripperJoe
I've loaded the latest XP nForce drivers (since there are no 2008 drivers listed)....

No Vista drivers available?

 

[TripperJoe]

I tried Vista, 2003, and XP. All say the raid storage controller is working properly, but they still don't display as a single drive.

I was under the impression that software raid is problematic...

I have three identical drives, and I was hoping to run two in a mirror and the third across the network for daily/weekly/monthly backups. If uptime is not critical, would it be better to just use a software backup program and do hourly backups to the would-be raided drive?

 

[Nothinman]

I was under the impression that software raid is problematic...

Not really, infact I trust Linux software RAID much, much more than any cheapo onboard controller. I don't have much experience with Windows software RAID though. The main problem with Windows software RAID is the necessity of Dynamic Disks and the fact that you need Server or above for redundant RAID levels but you already have Win2K8 so that's not an issue.

I have three identical drives, and I was hoping to run two in a mirror and the third across the network for daily/weekly/monthly backups. If uptime is not critical, would it be better to just use a software backup program and do hourly backups to the would-be raided drive?

RAID and backups are two separate things. A mirror is used to keep the server up when a drive dies, backups have nothing to do with that.

 

[TripperJoe]

Hmm, okay, so I guess there's really no reason to continue with the mirror if system uptime isn't really paramount. I mean, it would be a pain if one of the drives died and take me a few hours to get everything back in order, but the data would still be retrievable from the backups.

Upside is that now I get to avoid this driver headache!