Windows XP Driver for Compaq 64 Bit Fibre Channel Adapter

I've recovered from failed boot devices on Windows 2000 many times using the
built in mirroring. The only times it has failed was when the mirror
device had a bad boot sector and that's something I could have checked by
swapping the mirrored devices when I first created the mirror.

--
Will


"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
interesting ... i would still prefer a hardware based solution. Just out
of
curiosity, if your primary drive were to fail under the mirror, do you
know
what you would need to do to boot the system again ?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I found the article that talks about how to make RAID-5 on Windows XP
work,
and I assume once you did that tweak you would be able to do mirroring
as
well.


http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/...pen/index.html

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
Yes, I know. I posted that to illustrate that you cant do it on XP. The
workstation products used to be able to do simple stripes and mirrors.
im
rather suprised they dropped the support for it. In the meanwhile, use
a
hardware based RAID controller. Hardware is always better than
software,
in
my opinion.

I wipped out my googfing and went to work. I didnt find anything, and i
doubt it would be a simple as a registry tweak.

- LC

The problem I have with hardware RAID is that quite often to recover a
system I need to remove the drive, mount it on a different computer, and
then work with its file system. Hardware RAID makes that next to
impossible to do easily.

--
Will

"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
interesting ... i would still prefer a hardware based solution. Just out
of
curiosity, if your primary drive were to fail under the mirror, do you
know
what you would need to do to boot the system again ?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I found the article that talks about how to make RAID-5 on Windows XP
work,
and I assume once you did that tweak you would be able to do mirroring
as
well.


http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/...pen/index.html

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
Yes, I know. I posted that to illustrate that you cant do it on XP. The
workstation products used to be able to do simple stripes and mirrors.
im
rather suprised they dropped the support for it. In the meanwhile, use
a
hardware based RAID controller. Hardware is always better than
software,
in
my opinion.

I wipped out my googfing and went to work. I didnt find anything, and i
doubt it would be a simple as a registry tweak.

- LC

Bare in mind that we are talking about windows software raid. So, with that
in mind, if you were to lose your primary mirror volume, what would you do?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I've recovered from failed boot devices on Windows 2000 many times using
the
built in mirroring. The only times it has failed was when the mirror
device had a bad boot sector and that's something I could have checked by
swapping the mirrored devices when I first created the mirror.

--
Will


"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
interesting ... i would still prefer a hardware based solution. Just out
of
curiosity, if your primary drive were to fail under the mirror, do you
know
what you would need to do to boot the system again ?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I found the article that talks about how to make RAID-5 on Windows XP
work,
and I assume once you did that tweak you would be able to do mirroring
as
well.


http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/...pen/index.html

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
Yes, I know. I posted that to illustrate that you cant do it on XP.
The
workstation products used to be able to do simple stripes and mirrors.
im
rather suprised they dropped the support for it. In the meanwhile, use
a
hardware based RAID controller. Hardware is always better than
software,
in
my opinion.

I wipped out my googfing and went to work. I didnt find anything, and
i
doubt it would be a simple as a registry tweak.

- LC

I wonder what types of hardware-based raid systems you have used. Are you
talking about HPaq hardware based raid, or dumpy IDE/SATA based raid on
consumer grade machines?

-LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
The problem I have with hardware RAID is that quite often to recover a
system I need to remove the drive, mount it on a different computer, and
then work with its file system. Hardware RAID makes that next to
impossible to do easily.

--
Will

"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
interesting ... i would still prefer a hardware based solution. Just out
of
curiosity, if your primary drive were to fail under the mirror, do you
know
what you would need to do to boot the system again ?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I found the article that talks about how to make RAID-5 on Windows XP
work,
and I assume once you did that tweak you would be able to do mirroring
as
well.


http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/...pen/index.html

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
Yes, I know. I posted that to illustrate that you cant do it on XP.
The
workstation products used to be able to do simple stripes and mirrors.
im
rather suprised they dropped the support for it. In the meanwhile, use
a
hardware based RAID controller. Hardware is always better than
software,
in
my opinion.

I wipped out my googfing and went to work. I didnt find anything, and
i
doubt it would be a simple as a registry tweak.

- LC

I guess I don't understand your question. What do you mean by *primary*
here?

When I configure a boot volume as RAID 1 using Windows software RAID, either
of those two volumes is bootable. When I lose the primary in SCSI ID=0, I
simply place the drive that was in SCSI ID=1 into the ID=0 slot and reboot
the system. Windows announces that it sees new devices (actually it just
sees movement in position of a device), and it asks to reboot. After
rebooting, the mirrored drive is now your boot device.

To fully recover, you get into Device Manager in Windows, and remove the
mirror on the now-missing defective drive. You then insert a new device,
rescan to acquire it, mark it as dynamic, and then mirror to it.

I've done the above sequence many, many times, and it is infinitely easier
than any hardware RAID I have used (and allows for more powerful modes of
recovery because you can work on a device from a different computer before
reinserting it to reboot from it).

--
Will

"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
t...
Bare in mind that we are talking about windows software raid. So, with
that
in mind, if you were to lose your primary mirror volume, what would you
do?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I've recovered from failed boot devices on Windows 2000 many times using
the
built in mirroring. The only times it has failed was when the mirror
device had a bad boot sector and that's something I could have checked
by
swapping the mirrored devices when I first created the mirror.

--
Will


"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
interesting ... i would still prefer a hardware based solution. Just
out
of
curiosity, if your primary drive were to fail under the mirror, do you
know
what you would need to do to boot the system again ?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I found the article that talks about how to make RAID-5 on Windows XP
work,
and I assume once you did that tweak you would be able to do
mirroring
as
well.



http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/...pen/index.html

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
Yes, I know. I posted that to illustrate that you cant do it on XP.
The
workstation products used to be able to do simple stripes and
mirrors.
im
rather suprised they dropped the support for it. In the meanwhile,
use
a
hardware based RAID controller. Hardware is always better than
software,
in
my opinion.

I wipped out my googfing and went to work. I didnt find anything,
and
i
doubt it would be a simple as a registry tweak.

- LC

I've used IBM server RAID, Compaq SmartArray, Compaq fibre channel arrays,
LSI Logic, and so far never SATA or IDE. Most of them appear to be quite
quirky in what low level formats they place onto a device, and I've had
problems taking drives out of systems and then trying to use them from a
different system, without destroying my ability to reacquire the drive in
the original RAID.

In any case, for a boot device, why would you prefer hardware RAID? It
isn't easier to use, and in my experience it has caused as many permanent
losses of boot devices as it has prevented. Over dozens of systems
failures, I have a much better track record recovering with Windows 200x
software RAID 1 on the boot device.

--
Will

"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
I wonder what types of hardware-based raid systems you have used. Are you
talking about HPaq hardware based raid, or dumpy IDE/SATA based raid on
consumer grade machines?

-LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
The problem I have with hardware RAID is that quite often to recover a
system I need to remove the drive, mount it on a different computer, and
then work with its file system. Hardware RAID makes that next to
impossible to do easily.

--
Will

"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
interesting ... i would still prefer a hardware based solution. Just
out
of
curiosity, if your primary drive were to fail under the mirror, do you
know
what you would need to do to boot the system again ?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I found the article that talks about how to make RAID-5 on Windows XP
work,
and I assume once you did that tweak you would be able to do
mirroring
as
well.



http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/...pen/index.html

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
Yes, I know. I posted that to illustrate that you cant do it on XP.
The
workstation products used to be able to do simple stripes and
mirrors.
im
rather suprised they dropped the support for it. In the meanwhile,
use
a
hardware based RAID controller. Hardware is always better than
software,
in
my opinion.

I wipped out my googfing and went to work. I didnt find anything,
and
i
doubt it would be a simple as a registry tweak.

- LC

I have no experience with Fibre Channel, however:

I had some free time today, so I sat one of the 1600's up on the bench.
It has dual 550's, 1G ram, and a 3200 installed. I loaded in three 9.1G
drives and had two more identical drives standing by. I set the
controller to have a single RAID5 partition (boot and everything) which
resulted in a 17G partition. I loaded Win2K Server on this boot
partition. The system works very fast and smooth and the install worked
without a single hiccup. I then proceeded to start swapping drives to
try to make the boot partition fail. Here is the result:

There doesn't seem to be anything I can do to make the partition fail.
I can pull any drive and replace it with a blank and everything
continues to run without any noticable delays. I even tried a reboot
and swapped a drive while the 2000 loading screen was up...it still
resolved itself into a normal run. It's actually a pretty thrilling
thing to see under these non-stressful circumstances. It seems, from
the previous posts, that this is the type of result that Nutcracker is
used to seeing.

If Will can suggest an experiment that will make this system fail, I
would be happy to run it. At the moment, however, I am forced to
conclude that the Compaq Hardware Array seems to be bullet-proof.

Let me know if there is something else I can try...this is kinda fun!

Jeffrey Alsip

I don't think you can even do a boot volume as RAID 5 using software RAID,
so if you wanted RAID 5 for a Windows boot volume then you would have no
choice but to use hardware RAID.

For mirroring of volumes, try the following experiment:

1) Pretend the configuration goes bad with a software issue that prevents
the system from booting. You need to recover some older versions of system
files (maybe registry files). This presents a problem since in most cases
you need to boot the system to recover files.

2) Remove one of the mirrored drives, and insert to a different computer as
a non-RAID device.

3) Import it into Disk Manager to mount it read/write.

4) Recover the files you need to recover.

5) Insert back into the hardware RAID and try to boot from it.

Some hardware RAIDs can survive the above torture. Most can't. Either
the drive won't be readable on a foreign system, or even worse the volume
will be corrupted just by the act of trying to mount it. If Compaq's
mirrors can be read and written by other systems outside of the hardware
RAID environment, then reinserted as hardware RAID volumes and used to
reinstantiate a new mirror, then my hat goes off to them.

For those systems where you cannot remove the drive from hardware RAID and
use it from another systems, you can do all kinds of tortuous things like
try to install a parallel version of Windows and use that to recover files
to the other version of Windows. As long as the value of your time is
zero, that's a good strategy.

--
Will


"Jeffrey Alsip" wrote in message
oups.com...
I have no experience with Fibre Channel, however:

I had some free time today, so I sat one of the 1600's up on the bench.
It has dual 550's, 1G ram, and a 3200 installed. I loaded in three 9.1G
drives and had two more identical drives standing by. I set the
controller to have a single RAID5 partition (boot and everything) which
resulted in a 17G partition. I loaded Win2K Server on this boot
partition. The system works very fast and smooth and the install worked
without a single hiccup. I then proceeded to start swapping drives to
try to make the boot partition fail. Here is the result:

There doesn't seem to be anything I can do to make the partition fail.
I can pull any drive and replace it with a blank and everything
continues to run without any noticable delays. I even tried a reboot
and swapped a drive while the 2000 loading screen was up...it still
resolved itself into a normal run. It's actually a pretty thrilling
thing to see under these non-stressful circumstances. It seems, from
the previous posts, that this is the type of result that Nutcracker is
used to seeing.

If Will can suggest an experiment that will make this system fail, I
would be happy to run it. At the moment, however, I am forced to
conclude that the Compaq Hardware Array seems to be bullet-proof.

Let me know if there is something else I can try...this is kinda fun!

Jeffrey Alsip

what i mean is this: with software raid, you basically have 1 boot drive.
The big hint I am going to give you here is this: ARC Path. If the "boot"
drive in a software mirror goes bad ... what are you going to do to boot
your system using the other disk (the partner in the mirror)?

The following constraints apply:

no re-install media
only 1 computer at hand (the one with the failed disk)


- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I guess I don't understand your question. What do you mean by *primary*
here?

When I configure a boot volume as RAID 1 using Windows software RAID,
either
of those two volumes is bootable. When I lose the primary in SCSI ID=0,
I
simply place the drive that was in SCSI ID=1 into the ID=0 slot and reboot
the system. Windows announces that it sees new devices (actually it just
sees movement in position of a device), and it asks to reboot. After
rebooting, the mirrored drive is now your boot device.

To fully recover, you get into Device Manager in Windows, and remove the
mirror on the now-missing defective drive. You then insert a new device,
rescan to acquire it, mark it as dynamic, and then mirror to it.

I've done the above sequence many, many times, and it is infinitely easier
than any hardware RAID I have used (and allows for more powerful modes of
recovery because you can work on a device from a different computer before
reinserting it to reboot from it).

--
Will

"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
t...
Bare in mind that we are talking about windows software raid. So, with
that
in mind, if you were to lose your primary mirror volume, what would you
do?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I've recovered from failed boot devices on Windows 2000 many times
using
the
built in mirroring. The only times it has failed was when the mirror
device had a bad boot sector and that's something I could have checked
by
swapping the mirrored devices when I first created the mirror.

--
Will


"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
interesting ... i would still prefer a hardware based solution. Just
out
of
curiosity, if your primary drive were to fail under the mirror, do you
know
what you would need to do to boot the system again ?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I found the article that talks about how to make RAID-5 on Windows XP
work,
and I assume once you did that tweak you would be able to do
mirroring
as
well.



http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/...pen/index.html

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
Yes, I know. I posted that to illustrate that you cant do it on XP.
The
workstation products used to be able to do simple stripes and
mirrors.
im
rather suprised they dropped the support for it. In the meanwhile,
use
a
hardware based RAID controller. Hardware is always better than
software,
in
my opinion.

I wipped out my googfing and went to work. I didnt find anything,
and
i
doubt it would be a simple as a registry tweak.

- LC

software raid often necessitates that, so dont use it. It is the way of the
amateur. I have never had raid volume corruption on a RAID1 volume (harware
raid) and I have used the following controllers:

Mylex
AMI
Dell PERC
HP NetRAID
IBM ServeRAID
Adaptec
and Compaq Smart Array (as far back as the IDA and IDA II models).

I have to site your approach to raid as being serious flawed. Especially if
you find yourself "frequently" haveing to swap drives between systems to get
data from them. I dont fully understand what you are doing, but it just
doesnt sound right.


"Will" wrote in message
...
The problem I have with hardware RAID is that quite often to recover a
system I need to remove the drive, mount it on a different computer, and
then work with its file system. Hardware RAID makes that next to
impossible to do easily.

--
Will

"Nut Cracker" wrote in message
...
interesting ... i would still prefer a hardware based solution. Just out
of
curiosity, if your primary drive were to fail under the mirror, do you
know
what you would need to do to boot the system again ?

- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I found the article that talks about how to make RAID-5 on Windows XP
work,
and I assume once you did that tweak you would be able to do mirroring
as
well.


http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/...pen/index.html

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
Yes, I know. I posted that to illustrate that you cant do it on XP.
The
workstation products used to be able to do simple stripes and mirrors.
im
rather suprised they dropped the support for it. In the meanwhile, use
a
hardware based RAID controller. Hardware is always better than
software,
in
my opinion.

I wipped out my googfing and went to work. I didnt find anything, and
i
doubt it would be a simple as a registry tweak.

- LC