windows raid

[saltynay]

on my gaming rig I have my 2x500gb in raid0 which I configured through windows disk manager but now I wan't to reinstall windows so I was wondering whether this would corrupt the raid array and make me lose all of my data which obviously wouldn't be the greatest thing

[kungpo]

Not good I'm afraid. As the array is provided by the OS, it'squite likely it's a gonna with the re-install.

Better to havet he array provided by hardware and be independant of the OS.

[DataMatrix]

Software RAIDS are majorly inferior to hardware RAID arrays, software RAIDs are slow and use a lot of CPU.

[saltynay]

I couldn't configure the hardware rai to work though it didn't seem compatible with windows

[kungpo]

I think you probably need the f6 driver at the time to install XP (I had this with a p5bo0 system I build last week.

Best to see if you can buy/borrow/steal a large USB drive to back it up, so you can try using the Matrix RAID next time.

[saltynay]

I have 200gb external with me but my data that actually has to be saved equates to about 250gb which is just agro!!!!!

[vinnyT]

Can you save your data compressed with a prog like winzip (or 7-zip free from - http://www.7-zip.org/ ), this should allow you to temp store on your 2oogb drive.

Or, if you have trueimage (or ghost) you can create compressed images.

Not all data is easy to compress though ie .jpg files which are already compress.

[GoNz0]

i used to run a raid array within windows and have never had a problem rebuilding it, all you have to do is go into disk managment and reactivate the volume.

am i to assume you have a drive with windows on and a pair of raid 0 as well ?

[Agent]

....software RAIDs are slow and use a lot of CPU.

Actually, with today's insanely fast CPU's its really not very much providing it is using good drivers

[Agrippa]

Agree with Agent. There are numerous examples of people who get very good performance from s/w raid, with only a few % CPU use. The notion that s/w raid is slow and cpu intensive basically hails from the time of the Pentium IIIs and before and has been outdated for years. That said, s/w raid is not really suitable for putting the OS on, for the simple reason that you need an OS up and running to establish it in the first place.....

[GoNz0]

im still trying to figure out what the 1st set of replys b4 mine are about, clearly they have no idea about software raid whatsoever.

[Agent]

That said, s/w raid is not really suitable for putting the OS on, for the simple reason that you need an OS up and running to establish it in the first place.....

Thats what Kernel level drivers are for