RAID5 in WindowsXP Pro

[WHOAA]

i recently read the article on modifying some files with a hex editor to be able to use raid5 in windows xp pro...

Raid5 in WindowsXP Pro

i was wondering IF i was to do raid5 this way, how exactly would u bring the raid5 volume up in windows after a reinstall??

 

[sturm]

Do you mean: Make raid 5 in windows, do an OS reinstall, and then bring that same raid 5 setup in windows? It would be risky if it would even work.
Since the origional os is what was keeping track of the raid setup, once the os was reinstalled that info would be wiped out also. Its not like a hardware raid where the settings are kept in the hardware.

 

[WHOAA]

what if u set the same exact settings....so many questions about this. i wish the article would have covered this situation. if u are unable to reinstall windows and bring these back up..its pretty pointless. so i guess the only thing to do is actually try it. just wish someone tried it already so i knew... :lol:

 

[bshor]

I've done this modification on my WinXP system (3 Samsung 250Gb drive), and it worked fine for a half year. I made this RAID5 a D drive for data, so the system is on a separate, non-RAID5 hard drive.

Recently, I've had some system instability (other driver problems), and I'm considering reinstalling WinXP. I think the article talks about moving the RAID5 setup to another computer, so I assume it will also work after a reinstall, though after another hex edit.

 

[WHOAA]

after rereading thata rticle quite a few times(was a bit gray in that area). i figured out it prolly would be possible but, when u reinstall could u please notify me somehow or jus post in here again and lemme know if it worked. i will be ordering 2 more hds this week and then trying this. if u dont try by then i was just gonna go ahead and test personally by just throwing a couple thigns on the raid5 and having a seperate system drive like urself and going ahead and reinstalling jus to know for sure. but if u do please update me on how it worked out for u. if worst comes to worst i did see a raid5 card for like 175$ on newegg :roll:

thanks
WHOAA

 

[jj987]

I just joined THG because of this. I too was wondering if there was any way to bring back up the raid if you were to format the OS drive. I have run a test where I set up the raid 5, threw some files on there and then formatted the OS drive and see if the raid could come back up. After the format I could not get XP to see the raid. If anyone else has tried this please let me what they did different if they got this to work. I have been running on the XP raid 5 for a few months and have been happy with the results, but like most of you said, this would pointless if you have to have another system set up, etc. If there is no way to recover the raid after a format, I will look into a hardware solution.

System specs
AMD 64 2800
ECS K8HT-1600 board
1.5 gig ram DDR400
Seagate 120 OS drive w/ XP (SP2, and all the other updates)
4 X 200 gig Seagate drive for Raid 5

Also another note for those wanting to try this, please make sure you run your system on some type of battery backup system. If the power were to go out in your home and your systems doesn not shut down properly, the raid 5 will have to regenerate itself. I've had this happen several times which shows it works as it's suppose to but it is a hassel because if you have a raid the size like mine, it takes usualy a night to rebuild the raid to "healthy" status according to the disk management.

 

[bshor]

Well, my plan is not to reformat the OS drive, just to reinstall WinXP. Still havn't had time to do it. But you say you did reformat the OS drive, reinstalled XP, and then applied the hex edit -- and it failed to recognize the RAID partition?

Funny that no other site has mentioned this hack, nor has Tom's followed up on it in all this time.

 

[WHOAA]

Well, my plan is not to reformat the OS drive, just to reinstall WinXP.

i always delete the partition on my os drive then create new one and reinstall xp...i wouldnt install xp overtop itself.

but ive been running raid5 over a month now. as jj987 said, if ur power goes out it will need to regenerate ur raid5. on the good side, u can access it during regenerization(i think hardware raid5 u cant).

i did reinstall xp pro after setting up the raid5 right away just for testing. u will install xp then be on desktop. then u need to obviously reboot and change those files and reboot into xp and then u need to right click one of the disks in disk management and initialize and it will regenerate with no problems.

regenerization takes me about a good 4-5 hrs
im running 5x250gig wd caviar re's
system specs are
amd athlon x2 4400+
asus a8n-sli board
2gigs ocz platinum ram
and also i run my os on a 36gb raptor

so if u plan on doing this i def suggest having a seperate drive for os as i dont know what would happen if u put ur os on the raid5, or if ud even be able to.

anymore questions or suggestions please post

 

[jj987]

bshor -
After I set up the raid, I formatted my OS drive ran through all the updates and edited the files and everything to set up the raid 5 and I was unable to get XP to recogize the raid i had set up before.

Whoaa -
After doing all the set up I was not able to regenerate the Raid. I will have to try another test again to see what happens.

Overall I would still prefer a hardware solution because all of this lies on the reliability of your OS drive. If your OS drive were to eat it, then you'd be SOL, but according to WHOAA you can recover the raid on a fresh OS install. I'll have to try this in the next few coming up weeks to see if this is possible.

Thanks for the help all and like WHOAA said, please post anything you find out about this here.

 

[bshor]

So it looks like there are different experiences in formatting the OS drive and reinstalling the OS. whoaa says it can work, jj987 says it didn't. That's not encouraging.

My plan is to back up my RAID5 volume onto a single backup drive to protect myself, then rebuild a RAID5 volume if necessary after the reinstall of XP.

 

[WHOAA]

Whoaa -
After doing all the set up I was not able to regenerate the Raid. I will have to try another test again to see what happens.

little more info might help.
did ur dynamic disks appear in disk management?
did u have the option when u right clicked one of the drives to reactivate volume?

 

[jj987]

Whoaa -
After doing all the set up I was not able to regenerate the Raid. I will have to try another test again to see what happens.

little more info might help.
did ur dynamic disks appear in disk management?
did u have the option when u right clicked one of the drives to reactivate volume?

I did see the disk come up. They showed up as dynamic disks, but they were all grayed out, and I did not have the options to reactivate.

 

[WHOAA]

Whoaa -
After doing all the set up I was not able to regenerate the Raid. I will have to try another test again to see what happens.

little more info might help.
did ur dynamic disks appear in disk management?
did u have the option when u right clicked one of the drives to reactivate volume?

I did see the disk come up. They showed up as dynamic disks, but they were all grayed out, and I did not have the options to reactivate.

hmm...weird.
im pretty sure mine were grayed out also. but i cant be positive. was over a month ago...if not longer.