Installing RAID 1 on Windows Server 2003

[meat2783]

Currently I have a Windows Server 2003 (as a web server) running at home on a 20GB IDE HDD. The motherboard does not have SATA ports, but I would like to turn it into a file server as well so I need SATA ports.

Would it be possible to install a SATA PCI card (Promise SATA300 TX4 4-port SATA II PCI Controller Card) to get some SATA ports and then use the OS to perform the RAID in Disk Management?

I don't need the IDE HDD in RAID, just new HDDs that I install for file storage (no OS). Thanks for the help!

 

[zenmaster]

That should work.

 

[meat2783]

That should work.

Thanks, I'm new to RAID, I had been thinking of getting a cheap RAID card but I've heard that they will use the OS resources to perform anyways. So I figured it would be cheaper and more reliable to just buy an expansion card.

 

[pug_s]

Windows 2003 supports software raid. Raid 1 usually doesn't take up alot of resources. So get a plain sata pci card and you can do raid under disk management.

 

[meat2783]

Windows 2003 supports software raid. Raid 1 usually doesn't take up alot of resources. So get a plain sata pci card and you can do raid under disk management.

Cool, thanks for your help!

 

[chookman]

This is fine as long as you realise that its done soley though the OS, so if you need to access these if the OS fails you might find it difficult (if its RAID 1 that wont matter though)