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Raid Question

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interactive

Gawd
Joined
Jan 26, 2003
Messages
685
I'm planning on setting up a raid 0+1 setup on a machine I'm building. I've done several raid configurations before, namely JBOD, but never really encountered the problem I'm expecting:

I'm planning on getting 4 120gb SATA drivers (manufacture, specs, etc not really needed for this thread) with a 0+1 setup I'd have 240 gbs of backed up, fast disk space, right? My question is, Windows XP only recognizes 160gbs or whatever, so to make use of that whole 240 gb's I'd have to partition it. Here's the question, is it possible to partition that 240gbs? I also want to partition it so that in the future I can say reformat a partition, back up some data to another partition and be able to access that 'backup' partition once I get an OS loaded.

Keep in mind, the raid controller will be all hardware based (onboard), or atleast I'm thinking that way?

Any help is greatly appreciated.
 
1st, its 137GB barrier, and since its an ATA RAID array it would be employing SCSI drivers, and that doesnt apply :D

2nd the OS will see the array as a single HDD and you can partition it any way you like
(per the normal limitations in Windows Disk Management, 4 Primary Partitions or 3 Primary and 1 Extended w\ its own Logical Drives)

3rd Your Backup scheme would work provided your not reformatting the partition the OS is on, since the drivers for the array are there, that is if the OS is on the array

there arent that many onboard RAID Controllers that will do 0+1 BTW
I have one on my K8W but they arent really the norm currently

and of course its nice to be able to migrate a card, Ive migrated my SX6000 RAID 5 array through 3 different computers
 
Well, it's a longshot but are you usiing PartitionMagic? It will only work up to 160GB currently. I know that's pretty weak, but it's all you get. No soup for you! You come back one year! Then the app might be up to the rest of technology.

Your backup scheme will work perfectly. That's exactly what partitions are designed for. You format one, and the others remain.
 
Ice Czar said:
1st, its 137GB barrier, and since its an ATA RAID array it would be employing SCSI drivers, and that doesnt apply :D

2nd the OS will see the array as a single HDD and you can partition it any way you like
(per the normal limitations in Windows Disk Management, 4 Primary Partitions or 3 Primary and 1 Extended w\ its own Logical Drives)

3rd Your Backup scheme would work provided your not reformatting the partition the OS is on, since the drivers for the array are there, that is if the OS is on the array

there arent that many onboard RAID Controllers that will do 0+1 BTW
I have one on my K8W but they arent really the norm currently

and of course its nice to be able to migrate a card, Ive migrated my SX6000 RAID 5 array through 3 different computers
Click to expand...

Thanks to both of you for posting.

The board I was thinking of was this one:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-164&depa=0

It says SATA Raid: 0/1

So does that mean both 0 and 1 or either or? Probably a question more for Newegg.

Thanks again for the help.
 
Backing up your data to the same drive in a different partition seems risky to me. It is too easy for user error to fdisk and nuke everything and raid 1 won't protect you from that type of mistake. Since you are buying 4 drives to begin with, just buy another 160GB and use it for backups.

Here is information on enabling > 137GB in Windows XP - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013
 
I wouldn't put mission critical data on the same PHYSICAL drive. All partitions do is keep the OS separate from your data. If the drive has a Mechanical error, your are SOL. I have my really important things on 2 other physical hard drives and Optical. Some things* you just can't afford to lose.


*porn :p
 
I'm not understanding this whole 160GB windows limit.
Are you saying windows can only have partitions up to 160GB?
Because I have 2x 200GB drives in Raid 0 and 3 partitions (20GB, 30GB, 322GB)
And I think Partition Magic can handle it too.
I made one partition when I installed windows (400GB), and then ran Partition Magic to resize it to 20GB and create a 30GB and 322GB partition.
The 322 is just what was left over after the first two partitions.

Maybe I'm not understanding what someone is saying.
I thought with 48bit addressing you could have 2TB partitions, and I didn't know of any barrier between 137GB and this.
 
Windows XP will not recognize anything but the first 137GB of Hard Drive space until you up it to Service Pack 1. It's an OS issue.
 
unless its using SCSI drivers
therefor, IDE Cards, IDE RAID Cards, IDE RAID onboard, SATA RAID as card or onboard and SCSI either as a card or onboard, that doesnt apply

Its only for single drives on an IDE Channel
and almost all mobos that support SATA drives on a port have BIOS new enough
that the 48bit LBA issue doesnt apply to the BIOS and a simple registry tweak that is included in XP SP1 or W2K SP3 addresses the OS side,

and a single SATA HDD on a port might be included in the SCSI catageory anyway?
Or its addressed in its busmasterdriver?
Someone running a SATA larger than 137GB thats not on a RAID clarify that please ;)
is SP1 required to see the whole drive?

and its 137GB decimal or 128GB Binary
History of BIOS Size Limitations
the Requirements to break the 137GB (128GB Binary) Barrier Tutorial also located in the Data Storage FAQ
48bitLBA.com

the 160GB is the next most common size HDD that the issue applied to
before that it was 120GB HDDs which where natively supported

NTFS can address 16 exabytes
Under NTFS, the maximum size of a partition (volume) is in fact 2 to the 64th power. This is equal to 16 binary exabytes, or 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes. Does that seem large enough for your needs? :^) Well, many problems with PC hard disks occurred when unintentional size limits were imposed by engineers who figured that, for example, "2 gigabytes ought to be enough". However, with 18 billion gigabytes it would seem that you should be safe for a while in NTFS. :^)
Click to expand...

but current partitioning schemes limit an NTFS partition to 2 terabytes (2**41).

and a system partition is limited to 7.8GB in NT4 beacuse of how the partition was accessed by the BIOS
but newer OSs (Win9X\W2K\XP) dont have this issue
 
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