Vista and software raid support

[Zzooommm]

Hello,

I can't seem to find any info on the net regarding Vista and software raid support. AFAIK Vista is based on the Win2k3 server kernel, so I guess it shouldn't be a problem including software raid, but the question is will it be enabled or reserved for Server 2007 only.

If anyone has any info on this please post it, if someone has a beta installed please take a closer look at your disk management.

Thanks

Edited May 16, 2006 by Zzooommm

[fizban2]

just like with XP and 2003 software RAID will be avialable.

[Zzooommm]

That's good to hear, but there's just one thing that bothers me... As far as I know with XP raid was not "officially" available. What I mean is that it was included, but not enabled. There was an article on tomshardware on how to enable its functionality. I tried doing that on an XP box (to mirror a partition) and after modifying the required files with a hex editor, the OS would no longer boot properly so I had to restore the original files, thus no raid

I hope Vista will be software raid ready out of the box and will not require additional tinkering with the system files like in the XP case.

[fizban2]

there is striped and spanned drives available, but no Mirroring (raid 1) or raid 5 in 5381.1. sorry just checked again

[Zzooommm]

That's too bad

I appreciate your effort though

[fizban2]

mirroring will be available if you have a mother board that has a built in RAID controller, most m/b come with this now a days anyway,

[Zzooommm]

True, but that is no longer software raid.

[jondercik]

Why use software raid? Its PITA to work with when things go bad and its slower.

[Zzooommm]

Well for example you could put your swap/paging file onto a small software stripped partition.

I agree that HW raid is the better option for anything serious, but still SW raid is a nice feature in some cases. I was just wondering how much of it will be included in the vista, that's all.

[Chut]

Hi there. I'm sorry for bumping. I reached this thread via Google. Please don't close the thread due to the bump.

Anyway. I was wondering if anyone knew of any alternative software for having mirrored hard drives. The price doesen't matter. It is terribly annoying not to have my drives mirrored.

--

Chut

[phrozen2]

Hi. I am interested in doing this as well.

I've done the hack to enable software RAID in XP many times. Now, moving to Vista, it seems RAID 5 and Mirroring is not available in any edition of Vista. However, Dynamic disks are supported, including striped and spanned disks.

From what I've been reading, it seems that Windows Server 2008 (built on Vista), appears to support all of the software RAID 5 and Mirroring features.

So, I'm thinking that another version of this hack:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/19/usi..._raid_5_happen/

is in order.

I bet that if we install 2008 Server and Vista Ultimate (or otherwise) on the same machine and then diff the relevant disk manager related files, then we'll find a way to hack Vista to enable all of the stuff that has been disabled.

So, who's in?

Can anyone start by coming up with a list of files we should check? I looked for dmadmin, dmboot, etc, and they don't seem to exist in Vista. I'm guessing they've changed names....

[skymasteres]

All I can say is that I am really suprised that microsoft would nerf Vista in that way.

I moved to vista because of my memory needs and am dissapointed that I can not carry my software raid one drive set over...