Drive mirroring / backup

For some reason, I've been thinking that RAID 1 was available in XP Pro...but apparently it isn't? My question is, are there any other reasonable options I could take with an XP Pro machine to mirror the drives?

I would be willing to just run backups each day and backup to the other drive. Having the data copy to each drive constantly isn't necessary, as the second drive is simply for backup in the event of the main drives failure.

Any suggestions?

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Comments

Sie

Just schedule a batch file to xcopy the data over at say 2am when you tucked up in bed.

Very simple and 'sellotape and string' way of fixing it but im not sure how complex you want it.

Is it for just data or system files aswell?

(as such above wouldnt work and I would proberbly image it)

sprkymrk

You can buy some fairly inexpensive RAID controllers for an XP box to do this. Some mother boards have it built in too. Adaptec has a wide variety, here is a SATA controller that will do RAID 0, 1, and 10 for $125:

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/raid_tech/sata_drives/AAR-1420SA/

/usr

So if I get a hardware RAID controller, I can still setup RAID 1 under XP Pro?

I need to copy everything, so if one drive fails, the other can be used to immediately bring the machine back up.

Ahriakin

A lot of motherboards have integrated RAID functions too. If you built your own and it's newer than about 3 years have a check in the manual, you might already be able to do it.

seuss_ssues

You can do RAID Mirroring in XP.

As already mentioned you can install a hardware RAID controller - Best Solution.

And you *can* do it through windows. It is not built into XP but with some registry editing it can be enabled. I WOULD NOT do this. Its unreliable, slow, and some updates and so forth break it. I just know because ive seen it done before on one of our "pain in the ..." customer's system.

/usr

Nah, it's a spare Dell GX520 I have here at work. I run SQL server on it and just need to setup drive mirroring.

As far as I know, it doesn't have onboard RAID.

sprkymrk

/usr wrote:

So if I get a hardware RAID controller, I can still setup RAID 1 under XP Pro?

Yes, you can use a hardware RAID controller like the one I linked to, but you would set it up in the RAID bios (usually hitting an F2 or Alt+something during the bootup). Windows Disk Manager would still only see the one drive, not 2. The RAID controller will see both drives, and create the mirror.

/usr

So everything just essentially runs in the background after being set through the BIOS? The data copying and even the presence of the drive is transparent to Windows, but in the event of a drive failure, I can just swap the good drive and boot from it?

ajs1976

If the RAID is working properly and one of the drives fails, the system will just keep running. I do not have to switch to it.

royal

I had a Windows XP box I tried using the RAID Controller card that Mark linked to. When I placed it into the box, it wouldn't show the configuration bios for the controller card. Not sure if it was the card or if I was doing something wrong.