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#1
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setting up SATA nonRAID pair of drives
After thoroughly reading the thread about RAID drives, it got me to thinking
that, for my REAL needs (and not psychological ones), that my RAID 0 configuration of Raptors really is not necessary and offers me little advantage. Since I will need to remove the partition anyway to do a virgin install after spending a zillion hours chasing a conflict between Norton Systemworks (NAV) 2004 and my Audigy 2ZS sound card software as well as a conflict with Roxio Easy Media Creator causing Windows Installer to attempt to install DAO.msi every time Roxio 7 is started), I have tweaked the registry and installed and uninstalled and reinstalled and patched until my XP registry is less than perfect (I wonder if many people know how many entries Norton puts into the registry and are there even when it is uninstalled?) Thus, although this new build is running fine and there are no crashes, I plan to set up a virgin install of XP-Pro (leaving out Norton software!!!!) and am wondering how to do so with both SATA drives connected to the South bridge Intel chipset (controller) on my P4C800E-D--I would want one drive for programs and the other one for data storage. Since these drives are not "C" and "D," how will their drive letters be assigned (there is a backup IDE HDD and two optical drives too)? Will I be given a choice of which one of the two SATA drives on which to install WinXP during set up--or will it be decided when I install a partition on one of the two Raptors? (BTW--my Promise controller is disabled in BIOS since I don't need it). Then perhaps go into storage management and set up the other raptor as drive D?? MikeSp |
#2
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So why not use the advantage of raid1?
"MikeSp" wrote in message ... After thoroughly reading the thread about RAID drives, it got me to thinking that, for my REAL needs (and not psychological ones), that my RAID 0 configuration of Raptors really is not necessary and offers me little advantage. Since I will need to remove the partition anyway to do a virgin install after spending a zillion hours chasing a conflict between Norton Systemworks (NAV) 2004 and my Audigy 2ZS sound card software as well as a conflict with Roxio Easy Media Creator causing Windows Installer to attempt to install DAO.msi every time Roxio 7 is started), I have tweaked the registry and installed and uninstalled and reinstalled and patched until my XP registry is less than perfect (I wonder if many people know how many entries Norton puts into the registry and are there even when it is uninstalled?) Thus, although this new build is running fine and there are no crashes, I plan to set up a virgin install of XP-Pro (leaving out Norton software!!!!) and am wondering how to do so with both SATA drives connected to the South bridge Intel chipset (controller) on my P4C800E-D--I would want one drive for programs and the other one for data storage. Since these drives are not "C" and "D," how will their drive letters be assigned (there is a backup IDE HDD and two optical drives too)? Will I be given a choice of which one of the two SATA drives on which to install WinXP during set up--or will it be decided when I install a partition on one of the two Raptors? (BTW--my Promise controller is disabled in BIOS since I don't need it). Then perhaps go into storage management and set up the other raptor as drive D?? MikeSp |
#3
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Help me out here--but I was under the impression that RAID 1 would add
overhead to the CPU as it writes info to a second drive and slow the entire system down slightly. BTW--Questions--in RAID 1--is the information copied to the second drive able to be accessed in My Computer in identical files (as doc or mp3 etc) or is it encoded and must be recovered somehow? Will the second RAID 0 drive boot if the first one fails? MikeSp ------------------------------- "D" wrote in message ... So why not use the advantage of raid1? "MikeSp" wrote in message ... After thoroughly reading the thread about RAID drives, it got me to thinking that, for my REAL needs (and not psychological ones), that my RAID 0 configuration of Raptors really is not necessary and offers me little advantage. Since I will need to remove the partition anyway to do a virgin install after spending a zillion hours chasing a conflict between Norton Systemworks (NAV) 2004 and my Audigy 2ZS sound card software as well as a conflict with Roxio Easy Media Creator causing Windows Installer to attempt to install DAO.msi every time Roxio 7 is started), I have tweaked the registry and installed and uninstalled and reinstalled and patched until my XP registry is less than perfect (I wonder if many people know how many entries Norton puts into the registry and are there even when it is uninstalled?) Thus, although this new build is running fine and there are no crashes, I plan to set up a virgin install of XP-Pro (leaving out Norton software!!!!) and am wondering how to do so with both SATA drives connected to the South bridge Intel chipset (controller) on my P4C800E-D--I would want one drive for programs and the other one for data storage. Since these drives are not "C" and "D," how will their drive letters be assigned (there is a backup IDE HDD and two optical drives too)? Will I be given a choice of which one of the two SATA drives on which to install WinXP during set up--or will it be decided when I install a partition on one of the two Raptors? (BTW--my Promise controller is disabled in BIOS since I don't need it). Then perhaps go into storage management and set up the other raptor as drive D?? MikeSp |
#4
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"MikeSp" wrote in message ... Help me out here--but I was under the impression that RAID 1 would add overhead to the CPU as it writes info to a second drive and slow the entire system down slightly. There is a very small extra write overhead and the proportions of writes is generally small and therefore it's a non-issue; no slowdown. The small extra load is not to the CPU in any case but to the system I/O bus structure. BTW--Questions--in RAID 1--is the information copied to the second drive able to be accessed in My Computer in identical files (as doc or mp3 etc) or is it encoded and must be recovered somehow? No, the 2nd drive is identical to the first. In fact during multitasked reads it'll spread the load over both drives for a non-trivial performance improvement. Will the second RAID 0 drive boot if the first one fails? NO, if any member of a RAID 0 set fails the you lose everything on all the drives. |
#5
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OOPS--correction--Will the second RAID 1 drive boot if the first one fails?
--------------------------------------- "MikeSp" wrote in message ... Help me out here--but I was under the impression that RAID 1 would add overhead to the CPU as it writes info to a second drive and slow the entire system down slightly. BTW--Questions--in RAID 1--is the information copied to the second drive able to be accessed in My Computer in identical files (as doc or mp3 etc) or is it encoded and must be recovered somehow? Will the second RAID 0 drive boot if the first one fails? MikeSp ------------------------------- "D" wrote in message ... So why not use the advantage of raid1? "MikeSp" wrote in message ... After thoroughly reading the thread about RAID drives, it got me to thinking that, for my REAL needs (and not psychological ones), that my RAID 0 configuration of Raptors really is not necessary and offers me little advantage. Since I will need to remove the partition anyway to do a virgin install after spending a zillion hours chasing a conflict between Norton Systemworks (NAV) 2004 and my Audigy 2ZS sound card software as well as a conflict with Roxio Easy Media Creator causing Windows Installer to attempt to install DAO.msi every time Roxio 7 is started), I have tweaked the registry and installed and uninstalled and reinstalled and patched until my XP registry is less than perfect (I wonder if many people know how many entries Norton puts into the registry and are there even when it is uninstalled?) Thus, although this new build is running fine and there are no crashes, I plan to set up a virgin install of XP-Pro (leaving out Norton software!!!!) and am wondering how to do so with both SATA drives connected to the South bridge Intel chipset (controller) on my P4C800E-D--I would want one drive for programs and the other one for data storage. Since these drives are not "C" and "D," how will their drive letters be assigned (there is a backup IDE HDD and two optical drives too)? Will I be given a choice of which one of the two SATA drives on which to install WinXP during set up--or will it be decided when I install a partition on one of the two Raptors? (BTW--my Promise controller is disabled in BIOS since I don't need it). Then perhaps go into storage management and set up the other raptor as drive D?? MikeSp |
#6
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"MikeSp" wrote in message news OOPS--correction--Will the second RAID 1 drive boot if the first one fails? In most situations yes. --------------------------------------- "MikeSp" wrote in message ... Help me out here--but I was under the impression that RAID 1 would add overhead to the CPU as it writes info to a second drive and slow the entire system down slightly. BTW--Questions--in RAID 1--is the information copied to the second drive able to be accessed in My Computer in identical files (as doc or mp3 etc) or is it encoded and must be recovered somehow? Will the second RAID 0 drive boot if the first one fails? MikeSp ------------------------------- "D" wrote in message ... So why not use the advantage of raid1? "MikeSp" wrote in message ... After thoroughly reading the thread about RAID drives, it got me to thinking that, for my REAL needs (and not psychological ones), that my RAID 0 configuration of Raptors really is not necessary and offers me little advantage. Since I will need to remove the partition anyway to do a virgin install after spending a zillion hours chasing a conflict between Norton Systemworks (NAV) 2004 and my Audigy 2ZS sound card software as well as a conflict with Roxio Easy Media Creator causing Windows Installer to attempt to install DAO.msi every time Roxio 7 is started), I have tweaked the registry and installed and uninstalled and reinstalled and patched until my XP registry is less than perfect (I wonder if many people know how many entries Norton puts into the registry and are there even when it is uninstalled?) Thus, although this new build is running fine and there are no crashes, I plan to set up a virgin install of XP-Pro (leaving out Norton software!!!!) and am wondering how to do so with both SATA drives connected to the South bridge Intel chipset (controller) on my P4C800E-D--I would want one drive for programs and the other one for data storage. Since these drives are not "C" and "D," how will their drive letters be assigned (there is a backup IDE HDD and two optical drives too)? Will I be given a choice of which one of the two SATA drives on which to install WinXP during set up--or will it be decided when I install a partition on one of the two Raptors? (BTW--my Promise controller is disabled in BIOS since I don't need it). Then perhaps go into storage management and set up the other raptor as drive D?? MikeSp |
#7
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Mike,
Any over head in writing is imperceptable - unless you benchmark it of course. If performance is an issue then it would still be an issue with Raptors in RAID 0 - Ultra 320 SCSI would be the next way forward. Intel has some stats on its web site that show that reads are faster, writes a tad slower. The objective in RAID 1 is for both drives to be identical, so if one of the drives is bootable, both will be - they are identical in all aspects except for some information somewhere on the very front of the disc where the unique ID's / drive serial numbers and whatever else for each disc is stored by the raid controller - this is transparent. The cost of RAID 1 is obvious 2 x 1 drive. Performance, well it is not worse and if anything better (optimism rings in here) than a single drive. I can't say I can produce any stats to support this at all. SATA helps, 3GHz processor helps... last system was dual processor and SCSI, so I was very very suprised to find the "IDE" based system as good as it is. With a RAID 1 assembly, you can pull out either drive, boot, see that the system notices the missing drive, continue booting and use the system, shutdown, put the drive back in and then watch the system recreate the drive image at run time while you continue using the system - albeit with a degradation in performance while the controller does cylinder by cylinder synchronisation (copy live to other). You can simulate failures at run time by pulling the power on one of the drives... Note that ICH5R connected drives are not Hot Swap. I believe that ICH6R are. One way to answer questions about how RAID 1 should work is to ask yourself how Should it work. Thats how. The most common situation where people have boot problems with RAID 1 comes about not with hardware RAID as you are using, but with Software RAID - Windows provides the ability to mirror two partitions on two drives. Because it only mirrors the contents of partitions, it does not mirror boot sectors and the other stuff at the front of hte disc since they are not in partitions. With the Intel SATA controller, you can make RAID 1 at run time if you configure the controller as RAID in the bios and load the drivers during windows setup via F6. An Intel RAID is RAID ready when you either start with 1 drive on the RAID controller or have 2 drives but not configured as RAID. You can configure this to be RAID 1 at run time (with another drive added if needed) using the IAA application. Just remember that RAID 1 mirrors what it is told to write, so if you write crap, delete a file, have a bad day, have a virus, it will obey. Multiple drive failures do occur as do controllers fail. So always keep a backup. Oh, and yes, I nearly fell off my chair when I first tried putting Nortons in... What a mess. If you are not going to use RAID 1, then I would give RAID ready instead although the RAID bios during boot may annoy. HTH - Tim "MikeSp" wrote in message ... Help me out here--but I was under the impression that RAID 1 would add overhead to the CPU as it writes info to a second drive and slow the entire system down slightly. BTW--Questions--in RAID 1--is the information copied to the second drive able to be accessed in My Computer in identical files (as doc or mp3 etc) or is it encoded and must be recovered somehow? Will the second RAID 0 drive boot if the first one fails? MikeSp ------------------------------- "D" wrote in message ... So why not use the advantage of raid1? "MikeSp" wrote in message ... After thoroughly reading the thread about RAID drives, it got me to thinking that, for my REAL needs (and not psychological ones), that my RAID 0 configuration of Raptors really is not necessary and offers me little advantage. Since I will need to remove the partition anyway to do a virgin install after spending a zillion hours chasing a conflict between Norton Systemworks (NAV) 2004 and my Audigy 2ZS sound card software as well as a conflict with Roxio Easy Media Creator causing Windows Installer to attempt to install DAO.msi every time Roxio 7 is started), I have tweaked the registry and installed and uninstalled and reinstalled and patched until my XP registry is less than perfect (I wonder if many people know how many entries Norton puts into the registry and are there even when it is uninstalled?) Thus, although this new build is running fine and there are no crashes, I plan to set up a virgin install of XP-Pro (leaving out Norton software!!!!) and am wondering how to do so with both SATA drives connected to the South bridge Intel chipset (controller) on my P4C800E-D--I would want one drive for programs and the other one for data storage. Since these drives are not "C" and "D," how will their drive letters be assigned (there is a backup IDE HDD and two optical drives too)? Will I be given a choice of which one of the two SATA drives on which to install WinXP during set up--or will it be decided when I install a partition on one of the two Raptors? (BTW--my Promise controller is disabled in BIOS since I don't need it). Then perhaps go into storage management and set up the other raptor as drive D?? MikeSp |
#8
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"Tim" wrote in message ... Mike, Any over head in writing is imperceptable - unless you benchmark it of course. You wont even see any SW/firmware RAID 1 overhead in most benchmarks. If performance is an issue then it would still be an issue with Raptors in RAID 0 Just a modest(smaller) issue with SW/firmware RAID 0. - Ultra 320 SCSI would be the next way forward. In the RAID and overhead issues U320 SCSI is no different than any other interface. Intel has some stats on its web site that show that reads are faster, writes a tad slower. The objective in RAID 1 is for both drives to be identical, so if one of the drives is bootable, both will be - they are identical in all aspects except for some information somewhere on the very front of the disc where the unique ID's / drive serial numbers and whatever else for each disc is stored by the raid controller - this is transparent. The cost of RAID 1 is obvious 2 x 1 drive. Performance, well it is not worse and if anything better (optimism rings in here) than a single drive. There no special optimizations in RAID 1 EXCEPT that multitasked reads are split over both drives so that both drives can share the load. I can't say I can produce any stats to support this at all. SATA helps, 3GHz processor helps... last system was dual processor and SCSI, so I was very very suprised to find the "IDE" based system as good as it is. Why? With a RAID 1 assembly, you can pull out either drive, boot, see that the system notices the missing drive, continue booting and use the system, shutdown, put the drive back in and then watch the system recreate the drive image at run time while you continue using the system - albeit with a degradation in performance while the controller does cylinder by cylinder synchronisation (copy live to other). You can simulate failures at run time by pulling the power on one of the drives... Note that ICH5R connected drives are not Hot Swap. Who says for SATA drives? Cite a reference. I believe that ICH6R are. One way to answer questions about how RAID 1 should work is to ask yourself how Should it work. Thats how. The most common situation where people have boot problems with RAID 1 comes about not with hardware RAID as you are using, Actually it's not hardware RAID but firmware RAID and there's a big difference between the two. but with Software RAID - Windows provides the ability to mirror two partitions on two drives. Because it only mirrors the contents of partitions, it does not mirror boot sectors and the other stuff at the front of hte disc since they are not in partitions. That's overall inaccurate. |
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