Win XP Pro Raid

[anrkyuk]

Hi

In a few weeks time I am going to be installing some Raptors on my A8n Sli Deluxe in Raid 5. ( Just a point of note Ive only ever in my life used raid once to mirror some old IDE drives for file backup )

I have read that there are some problems with sp2 regards the stripe/cluster size being limited by sp2 to 4k, something I wanted to set to 64/64

Can this be avoided by using an XP Pro SP1 cd and installing sp2 after O/S is installed or will installing the sp2 mess the cluser size up and restore to 4k ?

Many thanks
A

 

[lansalot]

"I have read that there are some problems with sp2 regards the stripe/cluster size being limited by sp2 to 4k, something I wanted to set to 64/64"

Provide a URL on that please? Given that the stripe size is set in the RAID controller (usually), SP2 or thereof will have feck all to do with it.

NTFS cluster size will likely be 4kb however, depending on volume size.

 

[spyordie007]

Software RAID-5 is not supported under XP. If you want to do RAID-5 I suggest getting a card that will do it, and using the card's utility to set stripe size (which would be far better than software RAID within Windows). Yes I know that you can hack up the OS and make it work, but I dont recomend it.

64k for the stripe size is pretty common, but why would you want to have 64k as the cluster size? There are a lot of good reasons to stick with a 4k cluster size if you're running NTFS (or just about any other modern file system).

 

[lansalot]

It's not supported under XP, but this board supports raid5 on the SiI connectors.

 

[anrkyuk]

Xp doesnt support raid 5 ?

Please confirm as this was the main reason for buying the board to save on the added costs of a 4th raptor if doing 0+1

Regards
A

 

[Nothinman]

XP won't do software RAID-5, if you're using a real hardware controller (and for RAID-5 I really hope you are) you'll be fine as XP won't have any clue as to how the physical drives are configured. If it's a cheap-o on-board RAID controller it's probably not worth doing RAID-5 as all of the checksumming will be done in the driver and use CPU time anyway.

 

[brandonbull]

Try this link to see about software RAID 5 on XP
http://www20.tomshardware.com/storage/20041119/index.html

 

[Nothinman]

Try this link to see about software RAID 5 on XP

Yea, because editing kernel mode drivers with a hexeditor isn't stupid...

 

[brandonbull]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Try this link to see about software RAID 5 on XP

Yea, because editing kernel mode drivers with a hexeditor isn't stupid...

That's for natural selection to point out stupidity. It can be done on XP. I'm not doin' it.