“I had been looking for some time to find a way to get the same type of Software RAID support under Windows that is available under Linux for my multiple USB-2 and Firewire drives. Then, I found the coLinux project, and discovered a way to have my Windows and my software RAID too.”
connect your drives to ide controller, make dynamic, take out, put in usb enclosure and reactivate. now make your array. firewire is even easier, just mod the registry to allow it.
RAID via SMB? Wouldn’t that be very, very slow compared to a RAID5 setup connected to even a standard IDE controller? Besides that Windows supports striping out of the box. All you have to do is convert your drives to dynamic disc using the Volume Manager, then make a new stripe set. Why is this article even here..? What’s next, TFTP boot via dialup?
The point of the article was that it does allow you to get speeds similar to having a Software RAID setup, and allows you to use external disks which Volume Manager does not allow without hacking some of the system DLLs – and even then doesn’t allow for USB drives to be used.
Certainly an IDE setup is preferred, but it assumes you have room in your box to do so, and makes it harder when the time comes to expand the array, or to replace faulty disks.
Not all version of windows allow you to create RAID 1,0,5 sets. That’s why this article is here.
This is a frightening amount of work for a RAID. Just do it in hardware for God’s sake.
I understand folks who are telling the author “Just Do this in Hardware”. But if you read the intro to the article, the guy only has Win XP Home, which would require some DLL manipulation – and who knows when Microsoft will decide to plug that particular hole.
Personally, I’d rather just run Linux. But if you have to run Windows, and you can deal with a slight slowdown, this seems like a decent setup.
the guy only has Win XP Home, which would require some DLL manipulation – and who knows when Microsoft will decide to plug that particular hole
I used software RAID in Windows NT workstation back in the days Microsoft seemed to care about customers and the safety of their data. One day, without notice, explanation or even a warning, the next version of NT had this functionality removed.
Removing what any safety-concious person would call A Good Thing(tm) is not something I’d call a “hole”. Disabling such critical functionality while still wasting users disk-space by still installing the software to do the software RAID, only to play games with “checking registry” and crap to not allow the user to use the binary code already installed on its system, is not what I’d call a “hole”. More like malice.
Back when NT had RAID it wasn’t really used as a desktop OS by many people. When more home users started using NT based Windows, it made sense that MS would only support “server” features like RAID on the server version of the OS.
When I wanted a cheap RAID setup I simply built a low end PC with parts I got for free and added a RAID PCI card. It’s running headless in a cupboard, networked to my main PC with gigabit ethernet. That’s faster than external USB drives and it doesn’t degrade the performance of my main PC like software RAID would.
Building and setting up the system only took a few hours, much quicker and easier than all that messing about with coLinux. Obviously I could have installed Linux on it and used software RAID if I really wanted to.
“I understand folks who are telling the author “Just Do this in Hardware”. But if you read the intro to the article, the guy only has Win XP Home, which would require some DLL manipulation – and who knows when Microsoft will decide to plug that particular hole.”
I don’t think you really understand the RAID situation. To add software RAID to Windows XP would require an unauthorized binary hack, and might not be supported in a future upgrade. But would still be 10X easier than this huge list of instructions.
Adding hardware RAID on the other hand would be much more desireable than this mess. It involves buying a RAID controller card and the desired disks. Many different hardware cards (SCSI, IDE, sATA, etc) can be bought inexpensively off of eBay and other forums.
After the card is installed, drivers are installed, cables are attached, disks attached and powered up. The BIOS in the controller allows you to configure your partitions with your choice of RAID, RAID1 and RAID0 are most popular. RAID5 is generally not used by hobbyists. After you boot with your configured disk partition(s) you install Windows onto the partition. Or Linux. Or Solaris. Or BeoS. Or Whatever OS you desire. The wonderful thing about hardware RAID is that OS does not interact with it other than needing a driver for the controller card.
Hardware RAID is more reliable, generally faster, less configuration headaches, more recovery features, better tech support, better drivers, and it looks good on your resume.
Just do it in hardware and quit screwing around with software RAID. And don’t mess with IDE RAID0. It’s highly unreliable and will quickly lose your data.