Having returned from the Dime Store with a fresh bottle of Blonde hair dye…
I mostly support Win2kPro and Linux installations.
A client recently had to get a new “box” serving as both workstation and central storage, this came with Windows XP Pro. It has a hardware based Raid type 1 on a generic SATA RAID card.
Our goal is to achieve maximum “Fault Tolerance” such that no data loss AT ALL can occur should one of the 2 drives fail, RAID must past the test of “Hot Unplugging” the primary (drive 0) from the controller.
My questions are:
1. We cannot “See” the RAID configuration in XP – other than the SCSI device, which is the RAID controller itself. How does XP “percieve” the drive? Is it the Dynamic Disk thing?
2. This being hardware based (good thing) Type 1, how would XP report a problem, or failure, with one of the 2 drives? Is there a *.cpl that can be loaded in control panel that I’m missing? Or, having a generic controller there is no such thing?
3. The unit came with 2 *different* 250 GB drives on the generic SATA, one a Hitachi, one a Seagate. My concern is that for reliable mirroring, the drives should be identical (timing and drive geometry issues). So far, the hardware supplier hasn’t given a definitive response to this question. — Can 2 drives of the same size, with different timing/geometry be mirrored? If so, how does this work? (My experience has been that a 120G maxtor and 120G WD differ in size by a gig or so)
Thanks in advance for responses…
Sincerely,
Dogx
