PC guys, school me on doing a RAID setup

I lost a hard drive...a very reliable hard drive...and i lost a lot of data, part of which was the first 2 years of my daughter's life in pictures so I AM PISSED OFF and i just went out and bought two 1tb drives with the intention of setting them up for RAID so i have a fool proof backup. I'm planning on doing this through XP unless someone has a better suggestion? I've never done anything like this...i've installed drives and setup Windows and such but never with a RAID setup...is there anything i need to know ahead of time or do i just select the RAID option in the Windows boot up and it walks me through?


EDIT....nevermind, turns out my board doesn't support raid. Anyone wanna suggest a PCI raid card or?

don't bother that hard drive. I have software that can pull the pictures off. there not lost just not reconized. PM me if you want more info. As far as a RAID setup...I'm not familiar with that setup.

I believe the drive has some kind of mechanical failure...you can hear it clicking when it tries to boot up and it doesn't show up in the BIOS. I've already taken the back cover off and you can watch the armature jump back and forth when it's trying to boot up...i didn't damage anything though so i may get with you on trying to get some info off of it. I'm also gonna try to run it as a slave and just see if it'll show up that way.

sounds like the boost part of the drive isn't recognizing and the drive is looking for it to be able to boot.

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Originally Posted by 85_SS_302_Coupe

I believe the drive has some kind of mechanical failure...you can hear it clicking when it tries to boot up and it doesn't show up in the BIOS. I've already taken the back cover off and you can watch the armature jump back and forth when it's trying to boot up...i didn't damage anything though so i may get with you on trying to get some info off of it. I'm also gonna try to run it as a slave and just see if it'll show up that way.

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Sometimes the actual board of the drive is shot. From the way it sounds I am going to guess that it was a Maxtor drive. I have been able to restore data when the drives do what you are describing. You need to find a drive that is the exact same model, and swap out the boards that are on the bottom side of the drive. I would give it about a 60% shot of working.

As for a RAID, I am not a huge fan of the PCI controller cards, but you could look at something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-020-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-022-_-Product

Close but this is a Western Digital, it came OEM in a Gateway. Let me just add...i will NEVER buy a "store bought" PC again as long as i live because almost the entire thing has failed now...the board went bad, the heat sink, the DVDRW, and now the hard drive. I'm waiting for the CPU and memory to crap out on me now.

I've been getting mixed opinions on hardware vs. software raid setups...some people say the PCI setups are faster, some say they're less reliable since it adds another component to the mix. For now i just threw Windows on one of the drives to get my PC back up and my internet going again while i decide what to do. I may end up just using a backup program like Ghost (unless someone wants to suggest something?) and use the 2nd drive for that purpose.

I will be honest..... Ever since I bought a Laptop, I have no reason to get on a regular PC. I can take it with me and data log my car. I can burn all the cd's and dvd's I want. It does everything I need and want to do.

If it wasn't for gaming i'd probably do the same thing, but i also like to upgrade and modify which can be a little harder with laptops. The pc in question i bought off here in the classifieds...it was only like 6 months old and was a good price. I'm not at all blaming the seller...but this thing turned out to be a giant POS as far as quality and reliability goes.

How reliable is the built in backup function in Windows?

A RAID setup will not protect you against accidental deletion, etc. I would backup to an external drive (ie, copy the files to it, instead of moving them - you would be surprised how many people do that... ), preferably some kind of shadow copy software(Shadowprotect, etc.) or use online backup. I have a home server running RAID that does full snapshots of my PCs & laptops, then use Carbonite(http://www.carbonite.com) to backup the pictures stored on there. $50 a year is good piece of mind IMO.

I run the gigabyte boards with raid 10. Any other version or raid is pointless IMO. It's fairly easy to setup the board will come with the instructions however you need a floppy drive if you are going to use xp. My office machine runs backup via acronis true image.
Alan

I have a Gigabyte board and i could've swore it had raid 10 but it doesn't. As for doing an external...would it really make a difference if it was internal or external? What kind of software should i look for (as in, what's cheap/free and reliable)?

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Originally Posted by Dirtyd0g

I run the gigabyte boards with raid 10. Any other version or raid is pointless IMO. It's fairly easy to setup the board will come with the instructions however you need a floppy drive if you are going to use xp. My office machine runs backup via acronis true image.
Alan

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Alan is right, RAID is a pain with earlyer software, you need the latest, and it sounds as if blackout might have a point.

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Originally Posted by Blackout

sounds like the boost part of the drive isn't recognizing and the drive is looking for it to be able to boot.

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I have software (very pricie) that can recover lost software and data. but as far as back up you might want to get an external that can be controled via your PC. You might want to get someone to come to your place to set up what you need. I know how that sounds, but my cuz had it done and he is very happy with what he had to spend and what he got in return.

Oh i have the ability to set the stuff up, i've just never done it so i'm looking for advice. I've always just used a separate drive for backup purposes but i fall out of routine with making backups so i want something that's automated.