RAID 1 Vs Software Mirror
- Thread starter Orionaut
- Start date
Depends what you consider hardware and software.
Windows software RAID compared to motherboard RAID, no notable performance difference really, in fact the Windows software RAID will usually outperform motherboard RAID. A quality hardware RAID card with its own memory and battery backup however is a different story.
Windows software RAID compared to motherboard RAID, no notable performance difference really, in fact the Windows software RAID will usually outperform motherboard RAID. A quality hardware RAID card with its own memory and battery backup however is a different story.
If you have a few hundred ££'s to spend, it would be a good investment. Balancing how important your ££ is vs the data on the RAID setup, monthly backup would be cheaper!!
My "Irreplaceable Data" is backed up to (several) USBs on a regular basis. The other stuff is not irreplaceable but would be a PITA to have to recover from scratch (EG 150Gigs of Steam stuff)
Thanks for reassuring me that I am not taking a hit from being Lazy though!
(I have to say, I reckon one of the more useful features of Win pro over Premium home is the software raid functions, And it isn't even really advertised! Why not??
)Because its pretty old now (dynamic disks came in with Server 2000 or NT4 server IIRC). Its one of the things that are only really of use to power users and as such MS don't shout about those things.
NB: its really useful if you want to set up a RAID 10 on a server that only supports RAID 1 or 0 on the board.
NB: its really useful if you want to set up a RAID 10 on a server that only supports RAID 1 or 0 on the board.
(I have to say, I reckon one of the more useful features of Win pro over Premium home is the software raid functions, And it isn't even really advertised! Why not??
The average home user would probably dive for cover if you said raid. People who know what it is know it is there and how to use it. no need for advertisement.
Tis a good point!
When my new case arrives, there is no doubt that I'll be using a RAID1 setup with a hotswap to avoide having to back up more often.
So long as all the drives dont go down all at the same time, I think I'll be ok, but wont escape the occassions backup to external USB for peace of mind.
Just go into Disk Management and right click on a drive you want to use in a volume. You will have to convert from basic to dynamic first of all. After that the options for Spanned (JBOD), Stripe (raid 0), Mirrored (raid 1) and Raid-5 should light up as available.
e: Not all versions of windows will have all of them. EG I don't think Win Pro has Raid-5 (although I may be wrong)