I am wondering: Lets say, for backup purposes, I wanted to take two 1 TB hard drives, make them dynamic disks, then mirror them using the disk manager in Win7. After I do this, of course, it looks like one drive to the OS, not two. So I'm writing my data to them, storing music and movies and whatever on them, and so now without even trying, there is an identical copy of the data on both drives. Now, what if one drive fails, or I just yank one drive out of the machine. When I reboot the computer, will Windows just see the one drive that's still working, and just make the data available on it like nothing ever happened? Perhaps I would simply need to convert the disk back into a "normal disk" with Disk Manager? I could just try this setup in my spare time but I thought I'd just see if anyone else on the forum has done this already before, to save time.
What happens when you remove one half of a dynamic disk (in RAID 1)
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DCGPX
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Not tried it in win7 managed RAID but normally if the RAID volume in a mirror setup has a member disk missing it would boot up but complain that the volume was degraded and system at risk etc
Cant see this being any different just because it's Win7
www.tornadopc.com
Cant see this being any different just because it's Win7
www.tornadopc.com
NETWizz
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It probably depends on if this is a data volume or the actual system volume that boots the system.
If this is the system volume that boots the system, the BIOS will probably try the boot loader off of one drive (most likely) and as soon as the Windows Boot Loader starts, it will load the dynamic disk and psudo-RAID device then start accessing the disks together before boot up.
If this is just a data volume, it will simply show up as degraded in the disk management. Either way, you have the data... either way the one good drive would be able to boot the system provided the BIOS gives it a fair try.
14049752
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Disclaimer: I don't know this for a fact, I'm just telling you about one situation I encountered. I also did not set up this system, so I don't know that it was done correctly.
Anyway, I worked on a Windows 2003 server that had software raid on the OS drive. When one of the drives was removed, the data was still accessible, but the machine complained of missing boot device. When the other was removed, the system would still boot.... SO, it seemed that the boot manager was only written to one drive despite being a mirror.
Personally, I would never use software raid on a boot drive. For data, ok...but on an OS drive I'd want a controller of some sort (even if it's only a fake raid controller).
Anyway, I worked on a Windows 2003 server that had software raid on the OS drive. When one of the drives was removed, the data was still accessible, but the machine complained of missing boot device. When the other was removed, the system would still boot.... SO, it seemed that the boot manager was only written to one drive despite being a mirror.
Personally, I would never use software raid on a boot drive. For data, ok...but on an OS drive I'd want a controller of some sort (even if it's only a fake raid controller).
NETWizz
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Even motherboard RAID controllers are real. They are just built into the motherboard. The RAID Controller's chipset is not on an external card is all.
Often these "fake RAIDs" share the system memory and processor, which is the only thing I don't like about them. Obviously this means RAID 5 is bad on a FAKE RAID; since, your processor will have to calculate the XOR stripping with parity values for every byte written to disk.
YeOldeStonecat
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There are many reasons they are called "fake RAID"....I can write a book about those nightmares,...but often people experienced with working with mid and higher range servers and are used to higher end RAID controller features understand the reasons that those "fake RAID" controllers are called such. Poor performance, poor recovery, lacking in essential features such as online expansion and other options used in migrations, lack of battery back cache, higher chance of corruption, the list goes on and on and on.
To the OP...Windows will generally run just fine. Similar to hardware RAID, you'll see an error during bootup that something is wrong with your RAID...and once booted up, you can go into Disk Mangler and see that it's broken. You remove the busted drive, you go into Disk Mangler and "break the mirror"...and then run through the steps to rebuild it again with the new drive.
To the OP...Windows will generally run just fine. Similar to hardware RAID, you'll see an error during bootup that something is wrong with your RAID...and once booted up, you can go into Disk Mangler and see that it's broken. You remove the busted drive, you go into Disk Mangler and "break the mirror"...and then run through the steps to rebuild it again with the new drive.
Yeh, Funny!
I currently have a client that has a RAID1, one H/D has failed and the machine boots perfectly with the mirror, however it sometimes blue screens the culprit being the RAID driver, not too worried as I have a made a system image as a back up until the new hard drive comes.
I have not worked on a system with RAID before, how ever my understanding is after installing a new drive I enter BIOS and re-build the array. Is this correct and can I expect any problems.
YeOldeStonecat
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Since you mentioned "raid driver"...I'll assume you have some form of hardware RAID controller...be in a basic onboard fake RAID Intel SATA type, or a better RAID controller like a Dell PercI or HP Smart Array.
In those cases....yes you can enter a pre-boot (sorta BIOS) menu......many RAID controllers also have a Windows based GUI menu that you can access once booted up...to do the same thing.
Thank you for shedding some light.
I thought I would clarify something though: I don't need my system/boot disk to be a part of this software RAID1 setup. My boot drive is an SSD that I back up completely separately and using a different method. The data that I want to mirror across two or more drives is just extra stuff that I want to keep such as documents, movies and music.
I'm interested in making a dynamic disk because I have to in order to make a mirrored volume across two or more HDDs in Win7 don't I? That's the only reason really. If there was some microsoft software that simply kept in sync all data from one drive to another instantly and automatically, I would probably just use that instead.
I realize that a malware infection could destroy all my data since it wouldn't be inside of a compressed and encrypted backup, but I'm feeling okay about this since I never ever get a virus due to very safe surfing habits, getting timely updates from Microsoft, using good antivirus software, and having an excellent firewall (my router).
I'm just wondering what happens when one drive that is mirrored with another (as a mirrored volume created in Disk Manager in Win7) suddenly becomes unreadable. Since the same exact data exists on the drive that's still working, would it be readable to Windows even though it is no longer part of that mirrored volume?
I thought I would clarify something though: I don't need my system/boot disk to be a part of this software RAID1 setup. My boot drive is an SSD that I back up completely separately and using a different method. The data that I want to mirror across two or more drives is just extra stuff that I want to keep such as documents, movies and music.
I'm interested in making a dynamic disk because I have to in order to make a mirrored volume across two or more HDDs in Win7 don't I? That's the only reason really. If there was some microsoft software that simply kept in sync all data from one drive to another instantly and automatically, I would probably just use that instead.
I realize that a malware infection could destroy all my data since it wouldn't be inside of a compressed and encrypted backup, but I'm feeling okay about this since I never ever get a virus due to very safe surfing habits, getting timely updates from Microsoft, using good antivirus software, and having an excellent firewall (my router).
I'm just wondering what happens when one drive that is mirrored with another (as a mirrored volume created in Disk Manager in Win7) suddenly becomes unreadable. Since the same exact data exists on the drive that's still working, would it be readable to Windows even though it is no longer part of that mirrored volume?
YeOldeStonecat
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Just a reminder....
*Safe surfing habits mean nothing these days, malware writers infect "good trusted" websites all the time. This forum here can get infected, I've seen other highly respected tech site forums get hacked and malware spread. I've seen banks supposedly trusted websites get hacked. Your local daily newspaper site get hacked. It's not not midget porn sites that spread malware.
Even the top 10 antivirus software missed 30-40% of the rogues/fake alerts that come out by the hundreds of new variants each hour.
A router...a basic home grade router, firewall is only NAT...like a boat scupper...only blocks uninvited traffic in. Traffic that is invited in...such as a poisoned Adobe Flash advertisement on a website (because you opted to view the website)...your NAT router will not block.
Wether or not your can view your broken mirror drive...answer depends on how you set it up. Sometimes yes, sometimes not.
Spoken like a truely fearful and overcautious person. Keep spreading the fear of the evils of malware and how vulnerable we all are. lol gimme a break. I didn't post for a lecture on how afraid of malware I'm supposed to be, I posted about software RAID in Win7. Your helpful advice on that was, "Huh. Depends. Sometimes yes sometimes no." What kind of an answer is that?
YeOldeStonecat
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I'm not fearful nor overcautious. It's simply the truth, trying to spread truth instead of closing an eye to ignorance. Wanna know now much time my wife and I spend on porn sites on a weekly basis? LMAO! If I were "fearful or overcautious"...aka "paranoid"...I'd not be doing that.
The answer of "depends how you set it up"...was because you had a rather muddy reply in the prior post. Software RAID...you started talking about spanning across 2 or more disks ...which opens up other types of RAID, so we're not necessarily talking about just RAID 1 anymore. Without being clear of how its setup, I'm not going to guess at any answers.
...but with your attitude...I'm losing interest...
MobileTechie
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Now now ladies!
I have dynamic mirror on my server and I've had problems with it and it has still booted, allowed me to break the mirror and carry on. I can't say this will happen under all circumstances but I think it should if the problems are only HDD related.
Dynamic disks have other problems with many imaging solutions - some won't image them, some will but won't restore them properly and some will not allow you do mount images made from them. So it's worth checking that out if applicable.
I have dynamic mirror on my server and I've had problems with it and it has still booted, allowed me to break the mirror and carry on. I can't say this will happen under all circumstances but I think it should if the problems are only HDD related.
Dynamic disks have other problems with many imaging solutions - some won't image them, some will but won't restore them properly and some will not allow you do mount images made from them. So it's worth checking that out if applicable.
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