Ivan
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| posted on 9/10/09 at 08:16 AM |
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OT - Dumb ?s about Raid Arrays
Don't even know if "Raid Arrays" is the right term. Please forgive me but I am a total ignoramous when it comes to this.
After my Seagate firmware debacle I now have 3 x 1 TB drives - two of which I have put in my Desktop as a Raid Array ??? setup on a two channel ST Lab
SATA II 300 PCIe card. I then set up the Raid Bios as a Raid 1 (Mirror) for existing hard drives with data and this is where my questions arise.
1 - When I open Windows explorer I don't see the second drive - is this normal and if so how do I know if it's updating when I change
files on the first drive.
2 - What happens if one of the drives fails - will I get a warning and can I then boot directly from the second drive - if not how do I find out that
there is a problem?
3 - I will be running the third drive in an external USB casing and backup the first drive to it every night - will this work ok. What type of backup
deletes old files and replaces them with the changed ones, but doesn't delete files that I have deleted from the primary drive?
Hope some of you can help a complete numpty out on this.
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Davey D
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| posted on 9/10/09 at 08:22 AM |
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When you have a mirror setup, it only appears as 1 drive in explorer.
Normally you get some software from the raid card vendor that you can install. it shows you the status of the mirror, and if everything is working or
not
If 1 drive fails you should be able to boot off the 1 good drive. all you need to do to is install a new replacement drive, and then rebuilt the
array. you can normally do this in the raid bios, or in the installed software.
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Davey D
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| posted on 9/10/09 at 08:26 AM |
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As for the backup up of files, id recommend something like Robocopy. there ara loads of options available, like only copying new / updated files to
the backup location, and deleting the backup copy if you dont want the original either etc
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Gav
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| posted on 9/10/09 at 08:26 AM |
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1 - Your not really seeing 1 of the disks, your seeing the single "disk" or volume the RAID controller presents to the PC, the RAID
controller will then ensure that data is mirrord accross both disks
As for updating, you will just have to trust it 
2 - Best thing todo is while you have only just setup the system is to take one of the drives out and try just booting from that, i suspect it wont
work.
However IIRC what happens is, is that if one of the dirves should fail, the RAID array will continue to work bu you will need to replace the disk and
the controller should copy the data back across both disks.
The controller manual should tell you what warnings you will get should a drive fail.
3 - NT backup is part of windows and should do what you need. but something as simple as a scheduled commmand line batch file using xcopy would do the
trick ie
xcopy C:\FolderIWantBackedUp\* X:\MyDestination\ /D/I/S/Y/K/R
The /D/I/S/Y/K/R means that it will only copy newer files so it wont waste time trying to copy unmoddified files.
[Edited on 9/10/09 by Gav]
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Ivan
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| posted on 9/10/09 at 09:48 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by Davey D
Normally you get some software from the raid card vendor that you can install. it shows you the status of the mirror, and if everything is working or
not
Thanks Gav & Daveyd which has enlightened me to some extent. After your advice I found the management software (SATARaid5Manager) and installed it
in accordance with the manual - but it wont start - double click on icon but nothing at all happens - will have to search for help on that one on
Google. Tried switching off my firewall (Mcafee) but that made no difference.
Maybe search for some other Raid management software.
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thefreak
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| posted on 9/10/09 at 10:50 AM |
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The software will be specific to the particular RAID controller you've installed in your PC, rather than any RAID software
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britishtrident
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| posted on 11/10/09 at 09:39 AM |
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quote:
Originally posted by Ivan
Thanks Gav & Daveyd which has enlightened me to some extent. After your advice I found the management software (SATARaid5Manager) and installed it
in accordance with the manual - but it wont start - double click on icon but nothing at all happens - will have to search for help on that one on
Google. Tried switching off my firewall (Mcafee) but that made no difference.
Maybe search for some other Raid management software.
I think you really need to to stop and put your configuration back to the original two disk setup. Then you can work out exactly what you want to do
with the third disk and how to do it if you don't and carry on doing just trying options you run a high risk of wiping all your existing data
2tb of data with no way back.
A single disk no matter how big cannot be a raid array, even if you setup the the new disk as RAID 1 mirror of one of your existing disks
unless you know exactly what you are doing yo run the risk of loosing all the data from the first disk.
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