Re: RAID 5 Partitions

Dale E. Reed Jr. ( (no email) )
Thu, 30 Jul 1998 14:45:11 -0700

Majordomo@essex1.com wrote:
>
> >Gentlemen (and Ladies), lets clarify something here. I might be
> >wrong, but the initial portion of this thread was talking about
> >a HARDWARE RAID 5 setup, not a Windows NT Software RAID setup.
> >I believe we are getting things mixed up here and thats why there
> >is so much confusion. Hardware RAID solutions do not have the
> >limitations of mirror only and such, since it is completely
> >transparent to the operating system.
>
> NT Raid 5 is not limited to mirror only, it is full striping with parity, with

I know that and its beside the point. We are talking about HARDWARE
RAID here, not NT's built in sotware RAID.

> hot fixing (SCSI only). There is some overhead added to the OS but, I doubt
> if it's anymore then you would add with the drivers required for the
> hardware version (although I've never set up a hardware based Raid, never
> needed to). I don't know if NT Raid 5 supports hot swapping though, which
> would be nice to have in some cases.

AFAIK NT's RAID support does not support hot swapping. Most
Hardware RAID systems do. As for Overhead, there is *NO* overhead
for hardware RAID solutions. The drivers you install are typically
for monitoring the status of the RAID and doing maintenance. Normal
operations just see the drives as one drive from NT's perspective.
Performance itself is typicall 30% FASTER with hardware RAID than
NT's software RAID.

-- Dale E. Reed Jr.  (daler@iea-software.com)_________________________________________________________________       IEA Software, Inc.      |  RadiusNT, Emerald, and NT FAQs Internet Solutions for Today  |   http://www.iea-software.com