Re: RAID 0

RAID0 is also known as NOTRAID, it is neither Redundant nor Independent. As
Leythos indicates, lose one drive you lose the lot.

You seem to suggest that this makes backup less necessary, in fact it makes
backup MORE necessary. At least the backup will contain all your data (coz
if you lose one of those drives the system won't).

Create a full backup.
Create an Automated System Recovery (ASR) backup.
Shutdown and destroy the RAID0 array. (else it will eventually destroy
itself).
Create a 3 drive RAID5 array, using the 4th drive as a hotspare.
DO an ASR restore.
Restore your data from your FULL backup.

You might actually have a problem with the ASR restore. It may reject the
idea because the RAID5 array will have less total capacity than the current
NOTRAID. You might have to speak to MS about adjusting the ASR sif file.

Deal with this problem IMMEDIATELY, it will involve 'down' time, but it will
involve a lot less downtime now doing it as a planned procedure than it
would rebuilding the system (ie. NOT recovering, that would be near
impossible) should you have a drive failure and no backup.

If this message seems to suggest some degree of PANIC, I have not properly
relayed my concern. You should be sweating blood. By using a four drive
NOTRAID (RAID0) you have effectively changed the Mean Time Between Failure
and TOTAL LOSS of the system by something between 1 quarter and 1 24th (4
factorial) the standard MTBF of the drives. The system is waiting to fail.

"JohnnyD" <jdiggle@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23XY0HwEnGHA.3388@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thank you for your reply
What would be the best way of resetting the array?
Would it not be possible to just add another hard drive away from the RAID
Array and SBS backing up to it? (not entirely sure if that is possible)
Can one just change the Raid Array/Controller through 'Array Configuration
Utility'?
And what about the Data already on (operating sys etc.) would like to
avoid
reinstalling?
Sorry a little bit rusty on this!
Thank you again for your help.


"Leythos" <void@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Qd9pg.6301$Eh1.4758@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <#nxACrDnGHA.724@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, jdiggle@xxxxxxxxxx
says...
Hi
Just received new SBS 2003 with RAID 0 Array over four disks. I think
that
this was a supplier error as was hoping for two sets of two drives each
striped, with the operating system on one pair, as well as file, and
backup
& other files to be put on the other pair of disks.
(SBS preinstalled) Having switched it on and gone through the SBS
Setup,
I
have discovered in the Disk Management console I have only one Logical
Hard
Disk (0) - with a 12Gb C drive and 285+GB D-drive...
I can only assume that it is striping over all four disks - am I
correct
in
thinking that if one of the disks goes down then little data will be
redeemable? If so then surely there no point in doing a system backup,
since
if there is a single hard drive corruption then It will all go down.
Can one add a normal basic disk for systems backup purposes? (there
will
be
offsite backup for data)

Than you in advance for any advice

RAID-0 - stripe without PARITY across all disks - any disk fault and ALL
data is lost.

If you are going to do this, make life simple, reset the array with 4 x
Disk as RAID-5, so that you can have some redundancy, and then make it
one BIG partition. Yea, it's not a best practice, but it will save you a
lot of time moving things/profiles to the second partition and it will
keep you from running out of space on the small C partition if you set
it to 12GB.

--

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remove 999 in order to email me




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