Windows 64 Bit and RAID 0

[camacho6]

We put together a workstation using two 73G SCSI Seagate U320 hard drives and control card by Adaptec. We configured the system for RAID 0. The Windows Control panel shows "one" RAID zero drive, but "My computer" shows only one 73G SCSI drive? Why is the drive indicating only one drive of 73G? Shouldn't the volume be 146Gig (both drives combined in a RAID configuration)? Any comments to help me understand this will be greatly appreciated. Thank you. JDC

 

[gbhall]

Have you tried each drive on it's own? Does the adaptec card come with test software which will tell you all about the individual drives? What OS are you using?

 

[camacho6]

Have you tried each drive on it's own? Does the adaptec card come with test software which will tell you all about the individual drives? What OS are you using?

Thanks for your response gbhall. We have not tried each drive on it's own, but we "verified" and "formatted" the drives before we configured it for RAID 0 (striping). The Adaptec SCSI control card came with software and we tested both drives. The software of the card shows both 73G drives with individual IDs and when we boot the system, it displays one virtual drive of 147G.

We are using Windows 64 Bit (not Vista) which was released by Microsoft in 2002.
Because we knew that all of the RAID drivers might not be in the OS, we went to Adaptec and downloaded the necessary drivers to allow for the card to function adequately.

By the way, when we loaded the OS after we set it up for RAID 0, we established a 73 G partition on on of the drives. Windows "My Computer" is showing this drive.

We are thinking about adding two more SCSI drives so as to configure a RAID 10
(striping and mirroring). However, before we go there, I would like to comprehend what is going on with the RAID 0 set up we have right now.

Your response to this will be appreciated immensely. Thank you. JDC

 

[gbhall]

To understand what is happening is very sensible. The choice of operating System, though....not so good. XP-64 was kind of a trial run, and was quickly dropped. There has been no further development for two or three years, and consequently no drivers are being written today. Who knows, you might be looking at a bug right now ?

In fact, the link I give below will show you that XP professional 64 was not actually released until 2005, there has never been, nor will ever be, a service pack. Support in general is planned to finish April 2009, though security patches will continue for an unknowable time.

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&x=16&y=12&C2=1173

As to what you should be running, obviously it depends upon what you want to use it for. It could be a server, then Windows server 2008 would be suitable, but a Linux distro would be better. Or it could be a workstation, in which case only Vista-64 makes much sense, but I personally would run 'any old thing' on it and wait for Windows 7 SP1. I would not want to spend heavily on an OS which is taking a long time to move into a usable state, when the next real OS event will be (effectively) Vista SP2, but being called Windows 7 will of course require paying for, and is unlikely to even be offered as a cheap upgrade to Vista. That is business.

I am sorry I cannot help you throw light on the actual question you wanted answering though....

http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html is pretty good advice concening all available RAID setups. Raid 10 (or 1+0) does not come out too well. For sheer performance RAID 5 is best. Only needs three drives at minimum. I run a Raid 5 server on netware with three SCSI drives. Nothing has failed at 8 years old (touch wood, it is still running as standby server, taking live copies daily)

 

[camacho6]

Hello gbhall:

Thanks for your insight. I believe the issue could be with the archaic Windows XP 64 bit. We have Linux and I think might use it in lieu of the Gates software. Kind Regards, JDC.