[Question] - win2003 dynamic drives to winxp

[blasto]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the right place but here it is: We are now using windows server 2003 on a server on which two scsi harddrives are setup to be as one ( d: + e: = d: by the help of native windows disc management). We are planning to format the system and install windows xp and wondering if winxp will work flowlessly with these united dynamic drives. After formating and installing will it be neccessary to re-configure this drive setup and will it do any harm to the data stored. I would appreciate it much if you help with your ideas, especially users who faced such issues before...

thanks

Title Edited - Please follow new posting rules from now on.

--Zxian

[nmX.Memnoch]

Personally, I would suggest that you get a hardware RAID controller and configure the drives in a RAID0 array. Using software RAID (i.e. Windows Disk Management features) uses the system CPU for striping calculations, not to mention that it's actually harder to recover from. If you get a SCSI RAID controller you could actually get one more drive and do a RAID5 configuration. This would add redundancy to your setup.

To answer your question though...it should work but I've never tried it. As always, be sure to have a good backup of your data before attempting something out of the norm

[boggen]

never had good luck with hardware raid 0 or 1 or 0+1 that is built into motherboard!!!!! if you go hardware raid an elcheapo for just 2 drives could be had for around 10 to 20 bucks.

personally been using raid 5 software hack for xppro / duel boot 2003 server. main complaint for me. raid 5 for winxp i must reactivate the raid each time pc restarts through disk manager. more or less file server and rarly gets a restart.

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answer your quetion

xppro has native support for 0 / 1 / 0+1 software raid.

be carefull of encryption. from ntfs to encrypted files. if you just pull drives from 2003 and place them into xppro. you may loose access without importing given users / passwords / policies / etc...

[nmX.Memnoch]

Most integrated motherboard controllers are El Cheapos and will likely give you problems. The only integrated RAID controllers I've had any success with are the Intel SATA RAID controllers built into their newer southbridges. I have a pair of WD Raptors RAID0'ed...and it hasn't given me one single problem.

He stated he has SCSI drives. Pretty much all SCSI RAID controllers are decent to high quality. I typically use controllers from either Adaptec or LSI Logic. As for PATA/SATA RAID I've been messing around with controllers from 3ware lately. They are high quality, easy to configure and pretty darn fast.

[Takeshi]

Win XP Pro (but not HE) supports dynamic volumes (but do take note of what's been said above).

Edited January 5, 2006 by Takeshi

[blasto]

Hi,

I wanted to share the result of the above mentioned issue; impressive success ! After the setup of windows xp, os automatically recognized the previous configuration of the harddrives without any re-justification or intervention. This points out the fact that the dynamic drive knowladge is embeded with the ntfs and lasts with the filesystem. thanks for the comments.