Software RAID 1 on 2003 Server

SILENCER00

Gawd
Joined
Jun 22, 2001
Messages
519
I'm looking into setting up raid 1 on windows 2003 server (just being used as a simple fileserver), but I was wondering what the main drawbacks were. I'm not really concerned with the loss of performance due to it being a software array (over hardware), just concerned with any downsides to the disks being converted to dynamic and any difficulties getting back into working order if/when a disk goes down.

Upon a disk failure, we'll assume its the primary disk; all I'd have to do is swap the mirror drive (which would be the slave at this point) into master and boot like normal, correct? Then when I get a replacement disk for the toasted one, I toss it in as slave and then the array should syncronize?
 
You shouldn't have to swap drives to continue booting when one fails. I run Linux software raid1, and if a disk fails it will just boot and give you a warning that a disk is missing. If you have those WD disks that have a special "single" mode, though, they'll have to be set to that.

Then swap in a new drive (with the power off, please ;) ) and it'll recreate the mirror.

 
What he said... I had a RAID1 on my DC at home. I had to break the mirror to make room for file server drives. I unplugged the drive that at the time was the primary, then booted it right up no issues at all.
 
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