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Should I install WinXP on RAID 1 array??

R

rek981

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 6, 2004
Messages
130
Hello all,

I am new to Raid, and I just finished setting up my first RAID 1 array on my motherboards Promise Fasttrack 378 controller w/ dual 300 GB SATA HDs. I have set up this RAID array primarily for data protection. I do medical research, so my data is crucial, and I have been really paranoid about data loss. I also wanted to set up RAID 1 to store my media (mp3s, video, etc).

I also have another 250 GB SATA drive in the system that I am mostly going to use for gaming and non-crucial stuff because I have read that RAID 1 can slightly reduce game load times.

Anyway, here is my question. Should I install WinXP on the RAID 1 array, or on the 250 GB hard drive? From my understanding, installing on the RAID 1 would mean that if I had a drive failure, I could still be up and running in no time. Installing on the 250 GB hard drive may mean faster performance, but if that fails, I would have to go through the process of reinstalling Win XP (not a big deal really). I have noticed that many people with large Raid arrays have a small HD not on the array dedicated for the OS, why is that? And does that mean I should install Win XP on the 250 GB HD that is not on the array?

Ross
 
I vote for putting your important data on the RAID1, and installing Windows/noncrucial on the 250. I would put integrity of data over speed any day, especially if it's as important as it sounds :)

On the topic of loading speeds, are you referring to raid 0 instead? I've never heard of raid 1 speeding up loading since it's really still only reading from a single drive.
 
A few things here, if your data is crucial, you still need to make backups, RAID1 is redundant, not a backup.

On my servers I run the OS drives in a RAID1 pair, and the data on RAID5. My old server has two 18 GB SCSI disks with the OS, and 14x 36GB drives in a RAID5 array. My main reason for this was to save space on the data array by not putting the OS on there, and speeding things up a bit by spreading out the IO. Also helps when upgrading/reinstalling the OS, I can be sure the data drives are left untouched.
 
Sordid: I thought RAID 1 was slower than a single drive, I could be wrong.

tdg: I plan on doing weekly backups as well.

I am still undecided if I should install OS onto RAID 1 array or not. There is plenty of space of both.

Ross
 
rek981 said:
Sordid: I thought RAID 1 was slower than a single drive, I could be wrong.

tdg: I plan on doing weekly backups as well.

I am still undecided if I should install OS onto RAID 1 array or not. There is plenty of space of both.

Ross
Click to expand...
My error, I apologize. I thought you said increase instead of reduce in terms of load times.

Raid 1 can quite possibly give a performance hit, hence not good for a speed critical construct. A raid 5 array will give you a better throughput, but can be more difficult to reconstruct in the event of a failure and is more expensive as it requires atleast 3 disks but that further decreases risk of overall array failure. Raid1 requires just a copy from the "backup" HDD which makes it the most simple of repair processes.

Considering you're doing simple additional data redundancy with scheduled backup to an additional storage device, raid1 for that seems to be the best idea with OS (noncritical) on a separate system, imho.
 
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