RAID 5 on XP Pro

[speltrain]

Is there a way to set up a RAID 5 on a Windows XP Pro machine by using external firewire drives as the RAID drives? I do not have the option of using 2k Server or any type of server OS.

 

[jrbarnett]

XP Pro does not support software RAID out of the box, you would need to find a hardware RAID controller that ran under XP Pro and supported firewire drives for the storage.

John

 

[BrainSurgery]

The only way to implement a RAID-5 solution on windows xp, is by installing a hardware RAID controller card. Check with your hardware dealer for more info on this.

 

[BernardStewart]

I have a RAID 5 system running under XP Pro.

I has the following configuaration:-
2 EIDE 80 Gb drives
4 RAID 5 Drives on a Promise supertack contoller card.
This provided multiple boot options and the ability to store backups on the removable EIDE drives in case the RAID fails.
When installing XP on the RAID drive it asks you to press F6 for other SCSI or RAID drivers. You then install the card drivers from a floppy.

The only thing is to ensure that your MB does NOT have a RAID 0 /1 contoller chipser (which many now do) otherwise there is likely to be a conflict.

Took me ages and many trial set up configurations to get this info from Promise.

Hope this helps.

 

[lucasm]

Just wanted to update this thread with this link:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20041119/

it shows you how to implement a software RAID 5 array in windows xp. I did it this weekend and it is running fine (4x250 gb drives = ~700 gigs storage)