what is raid in windows xp professional operating system?

Question

send the answer clear related to windowsxp professional operating system

Answer 1

In computing, the acronym RAID (originally redundant array of inexpensive disks, now also known as redundant array of independent disks) refers to a data storage scheme using multiple hard drives to share or replicate data among the drives. Depending on the configuration of the RAID (typically referred to as the RAID level), the benefit of RAID is one or more of increased data integrity, fault-tolerance, throughput or capacity compared to single drives.
In Microsoft Windows, the number of drive letters for hard disk drives may be limited to 24, so RAID 0 is a popular way to use more disks. It is possible in Windows 2000 Professional.

Microsoft's Definition of Dynamic Disks (‘dem fellers is smart)

Dynamic disks provide features that basic disks do not, such as the ability to create volumes that span multiple disks (spanned and striped volumes), and the ability to create fault-tolerant volumes (mirrored and RAID-5 volumes). All volumes on dynamic disks are known as dynamic volumes and can only be accessed by Windows 2000 or XP. You can perform the following tasks only on a dynamic disk:

Create and delete simple, spanned, striped, mirrored, and RAID-5 volumes.
Extend a simple or spanned volume.
Remove a mirror from a mirrored volume or split the volume into two volumes.
Repair mirrored or RAID-5 volumes.
Reactivate a missing or offline disk.
Check disk properties, such as capacity, available free space, and current status.
View volume and partition properties such as size, drive letter assignment, label, type, and file system.
Establish drive letter assignments for volumes or partitions, optical storage devices (for example CD-ROM), and removable drives.
Establish disk sharing and security arrangements for volumes and partitions formatted with NTFS.
RAID 101 - The Condensed Version

RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The key word here is redundant. RAID was developed for data backup reasons on file servers. The basic idea is to have two or more hard drives in a system and when data is written on one, the same data is duplicated on the other (mirroring), and quicker than you can say “deathstar” you have a reliable backup to your data. It was discovered that if you could care less about your data, and just wanted a screaming machine that you could configure two or more drives to act as one. So one set of data is split and written to multiple disks, and you know the old adage “two heads are better than one,” well in this case it is certainly true. Two drives retrieving or writing a file at the same time (striping) increases the efficiency significantly. Now of course there are several possible configurations for striping and mirroring drives in the same array, but since I’m one of those who could care less about my data, I will focus on striping and increasing performance.

Be aware that if you decide to undertake this delicate procedure that your data is at risk. If you have one drive go down then you’re your RAID configuration is no longer valid. Remember, striping splits your data among the drives, so if you lose a drive to failure you won’t be able to access the half files left behind on the good drive!

Just Like the Boy Scouts, Be Prepared!

Windows itself cannot reside on a striped partition. Does that mean you have to have a third drive just for Windows? No! Three drives? Money doesn’t grow on trees you know. Remember, we are being cheap..err…frugal here. However, if you happen to be independently wealthy, just as two heads are better than one, three must be thrice as good, and four must be force as good, huh?

You can pull this off without a format and reinstall of Windows if you already have Windows on its own partition. My recommendation is to back up your data and start from scratch.

Since I’ve convinced you to wipe your drives now, give some consideration to how you will be partitioning them. Keep in mind that to do software RAID it is not necessary to have matched drives. You could get this done with an 80GB and a 40GB without giving up drive space. This is an advantage over hardware RAID, which requires like drives to retain all drive space. However, even in the software setup, I would suspect performance would take a hit if one drive was significantly slower than the other, or the buffers were different sizes.

Here is how I partitioned using two 80GB Maxtor drives:

C: =10GB single drive for Windows
E: = 100GB on two drives (50GB on each drive striped).
F: =10GB Single drive for backups
G: = 25GB Single drive for downloads
Z: = 2GB on two drives (1GB on each drive striped) for the swapfile
If you’re wondering what the 5.33 GB of unallocated space is for, that’s reserved for the day I figure out how to install Linux on a Windows dynamic disk :p

One more thing, whether you use two, three, or four disks; the biggest performance gain is when each drive is on its own channel. In order to accomplish this with more than two drives, the addition of a PCI controller card is required. There we go spending money on hardware again, but the good news is an IDE controller is much less money than a quality RAID controller.

Throwing Caution to the Wind

Now we get down to the nuts and bolts. Turn off your computer and physically place each hard drive on its own channel. If for some reason you can’t get this done with your system don’t despair. You will still be able to do this, but the results just won’t be as good.

Next we need to do a clean install of Windows. What we are trying to accomplish with this step is to remove all partitions and create just one small one for Windows. The size is up to you, keep in mind that without a swapfile, My Documents, or program files; WinXP pro will take less than 2GB after the installation of SP1. You do need extra room to grow for things like system restore, the registry, and the many other things Windows manages to bloat it self with. Also, you will want free space to allow for later drive defragmentation. My recommendation is 5 to 10GB. After Windows is installed get all your updates done and your hardware installed.

Now that you have a nice fresh install of Windows and everything is working and up to date, right click on My Computer and click on “Manage”, this will bring up the Computer Management console. Just like everything else in Windows there are many ways to get to this, this is the one I prefer. Click on Disk Management and it will bring up a screen similar to the earlier image.

Convert all hard drives to dynamic by right clicking in the disk info box to the left of the partition graph and clicking on convert to Dynamic Disk. Select all drives that will be used for striping, follow the directions, read the warnings, and finish...