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BING and RAID

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 2:11 am
by GordonM
I currently have BING installed on the system drive of one of my PCs and I would like to set up a RAiD-1 configuration for this drive and one other. Can I expect there to be any issues with BING when I do this? Should I re-install BING when I make the transition to RAID?

Thank you
GordonM

Re: BING and RAID

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 3:33 am
by celavey
I was thinking of trying RAID 0 or 5 and see if it works well with Bing.. Why did you choose RAID 1 for that in the first place?

Re: BING and RAID

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 5:21 am
by TeraByte Support
Any properly designed and bug free firmware or hardware based RAID will work
fine with BING as it uses the BIOS interface provided by the implementers.


"GordonM" wrote in message news:2320@public.bootitng...

I currently have BING installed on the system drive of one of my PCs and I
would like to set up a RAiD-1 configuration for this drive and one other.
Can I expect there to be any issues with BING when I do this? Should I
re-install BING when I make the transition to RAID?

Thank you
GordonM


Re: BING and RAID

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 11:29 am
by GordonM
Regardng the RAID level I wish to use, my aim is to obtain increased integrity for which I would like to use mirrored drives. RAID 0 won't do this. The rather old motherboard doesn't support RAID 5. My application is a personal server machine (Mail-server, web-server, VPN server).

The motherboard contains a Promise RAID controller (so this is a hardware implementation) and the machine is running XP.

This is not entirely a BING issue. However, I plan to take a BING image of the current system disk (which is the target of the RAID insallation) onto a third disk, which is not part of the RAID array. I am uncertain about a couple of things. If I set up the RAID array (selecting the drives in the BIOS installing the RAiD drivers by re-installing XP using the F6 option), will the second drive be automatically synchonized from the existng system disk (including the BING partition) ? Can I assume that, once RAID is set up, BING should continue to operate as normal, or should I expect to have to re-install it (maybe having uninstalled it before setting up RAID ... I don't thing that this is necessary, but I am not sure). I am presuming that the BING image, taken before RAID installation, is only there as an emergency back-up to retore things back to the original non-RAID state. I want to avoid having to start with two empty drives, if at all possible.

Are there any issues that I am neglecting here?

Thank you
GordonM

Re: BING and RAID

Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 12:15 am
by TeraByte Support
depends on the option on the controller. some can setup mirroring without
loss, otherwise don't and want to start fresh. So you'd want to have image
backups to ensure you can restore in case of a problem or if you need to
after setting up the mirror. Then the problem you'll have is XP won't boot
unless you have installed the storage driver. You can try doing that before
setting up the RAID if it lets you otherwise you can use TBOSDT OSDTOOL.TBS
script to install the promise driver (you need the individual .cat, .inf,
..sys files, not the installer package).

Once you setup the mirror, it will look like one normal drive to BING.

"GordonM" wrote in message news:2326@public.bootitng...

Regardng the RAID level I wish to use, my aim is to obtain increased
integrity for which I would like to use mirrored drives. RAID 0 won't do
this. The rather old motherboard doesn't support RAID 5. My application is
a personal server machine (Mail-server, web-server, VPN server).

The motherboard contains a Promise RAID controller (so this is a hardware
implementation) and the machine is running XP.

This is not entirely a BING issue. However, I plan to take a BING image of
the current system disk (which is the target of the RAID insallation) onto a
third disk, which is not part of the RAID array. I am uncertain about a
couple of things. If I set up the RAID array (selecting the drives in the
BIOS installing the RAiD drivers by re-installing XP using the F6 option),
will the second drive be automatically synchonized from the existng system
disk (including the BING partition) ? Can I assume that, once RAID is set
up, BING should continue to operate as normal, or should I expect to have to
re-install it (maybe having uninstalled it before setting up RAID ... I
don't thing that this is necessary, but I am not sure). I am presuming that
the BING image, taken before RAID installation, is only there as an
emergency back-up to retore things back to the original non-RAID state. I
want to avoid having to start with two empty drives, if at all possible.

Are there any issues that I am neglecting here?

Thank you
GordonM


Re: BING and RAID

Posted: Sat May 19, 2012 9:52 am
by DrTeeth
On Wed, 16 May 2012 17:15:02 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
"TeraByte Support" disturbed my
reverie and wrote:

> Then the problem you'll have is XP won't boot
>unless you have installed the storage driver.

Integrating drivers into a bootable version of XP with nLite is very
easy.
--

Cheers

DrT
______________________________
We may not be able to prevent the stormy times in
our lives; but we can always choose to dance
in the puddles (Jewish proverb).

Re: BING and RAID

Posted: Sat May 19, 2012 3:15 pm
by GordonM
Thanks both. Well, BING saved me again. Despite the fact that the array set-up offered a "don't delete data" option, I ended up with a clean install or Windows XP. I don't think that there is a way around this. My restored BING image worked fine.

It looks as if I am going to have to be content with the clean Windows install and install applications again. Fortunately, the most time-critical of these, my Mercury mail-server, is portable, so it's just a matter of copying back the directory structure.

GordonM