The second Hardware Q.& A., p.86, July 2006 issue of Smart Computing states that "When using a RAID array, it's unnecessary to use the built-in error-checking functionality that WinXP includes."
I have a K8T Nero, MS-6702 ATX Mainboard, running WIN XP Pro and two 40GB WD 10K rpm SATA drives in RAID 1 (Mirror/Security) Mode using the RAID connectors on the motherboard controlled by Promise. I've been running Chkdsk periodically, which runs through the 5 steps in about 15 minutes and reboots, believing that my drives were being checked and errors fixed. Apparently I've been wasting my time.
After writing for clarification, the author of the article advised: "From the perspective of your operating system, there's only 1 drive, even though there are two physical drives in the RAID array. The RAID controller and it's accompanying firmware abstracts the two drives so that Windows only sees the one drive under Disk Manager. Because of this abstraction, the Windows utilities we normally use to manage drives and file systems are superfluous.
"Instead, the RAID controller firmware monitors the two drives in your array for defects, and internally remembers not to use those sectors it deems bad. It also keeps track of where it has written data onto the two drives, and has internal utilities that it uses to keep fragmentation down to a minimum. These utilities are usually not user accessible, since they're part of the core functionality of a RAID system. Basically you don't need to worry about disk housekeeping when you're using a RAID controller."
Would like to hear more on this subject. Assuming that the Q.& A. writer is correct, shouldn't I need to check and repair any errors on the disk, and defrag, after well over a year of usage?
I have a K8T Nero, MS-6702 ATX Mainboard, running WIN XP Pro and two 40GB WD 10K rpm SATA drives in RAID 1 (Mirror/Security) Mode using the RAID connectors on the motherboard controlled by Promise. I've been running Chkdsk periodically, which runs through the 5 steps in about 15 minutes and reboots, believing that my drives were being checked and errors fixed. Apparently I've been wasting my time.
After writing for clarification, the author of the article advised: "From the perspective of your operating system, there's only 1 drive, even though there are two physical drives in the RAID array. The RAID controller and it's accompanying firmware abstracts the two drives so that Windows only sees the one drive under Disk Manager. Because of this abstraction, the Windows utilities we normally use to manage drives and file systems are superfluous.
"Instead, the RAID controller firmware monitors the two drives in your array for defects, and internally remembers not to use those sectors it deems bad. It also keeps track of where it has written data onto the two drives, and has internal utilities that it uses to keep fragmentation down to a minimum. These utilities are usually not user accessible, since they're part of the core functionality of a RAID system. Basically you don't need to worry about disk housekeeping when you're using a RAID controller."
Would like to hear more on this subject. Assuming that the Q.& A. writer is correct, shouldn't I need to check and repair any errors on the disk, and defrag, after well over a year of usage?