Setup for a RAID5 2

[glider03]

Our small office of 12 or so Win 2000 Pro computers needs a better backup system. We are using Windows Server 2000. Not sure at this time what the make of our new 40 Gig Hard drive is, but it is standard, not a SCSI. We are considering a RAID5 system.

We do regular backups. Can we add another 40 gig hardrive mounted in the case with the first drive using a RAID5 card such as 3Wire 4port card. (Do these require a Hot Swap setup or can they be fixed as stated above?)

We would like the second disk to mirror everything written to the original disk to produce a perfect copy in case drive 1 or 2 fails.

Thanks,
Glider

 

[mrdenny]

First of all RAID 5 requires at least 3 drives.

If you only have 2 drives, you are limited to RAID 0 or RAID 1.

RAID 0 very fast, no parity. If one drive fails, all data is lost. With RAID 0 no hot spare is available, as there is no parity.

RAID 1 same speed as a normal drive. Second drive is an exact copy of the first drive. If one drive fails all data is intact on the second drive. Users should not notice a failure. With RAID 1 you can have a hot spare (if supported by RAID card vendor) so that if a drive fails, the hot spare will take it's place.

Drives in an Array can be fixed in the server, or hot swapable. It doesn't matter to the drives. However, it they are fixed in the server, and a drive fails you will need to take the server offline to replace the failed drive. With hot swapable drives, the server doesn't need to be taking offline while the dead drive is replaced.

Denny

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

 

[Chacalinc]

Glider, Denny explanation is very clear regarding to RAID and his notes are very good... (good post Denny). In addition to Denny's post, you must consider the following:

1. RAID will portect you of hardware failures, either Raid 1 or 5, if one of your disks fails the rest will continue with the operation, as Denny told you.

2. RAID will *NOT* protect you of software/user failures: "del c:\*.*", "format c: /u", bad application, data corruption, etc. How will you protect your data? I recommend you, in addition to RAID, use tapes backup. With 40GB you can use even a DAT.

Cheers.