What raid controller do I need for IDE drives?

[Gsexer]

I know for a fact that my dell does not have a raid controller, cause I bought the bottom of the barrel model back in the day. I currently have one WD 2000JB, I am gonna buy another one here in a day or 2. Can somebody point me in the right direction for a RAID card that's IDE compatible? Oh, I am not looking for speed, so I am gonna run RAID 1. My wife would be ****ed if she lost her homework to a head crash. I guess my next question would be, what do I have to do to get the information from the drive already in use to the second one after I install everything? Thanks for the help.

 

[Jeepson33s]

Well, i THINK (someone correct me if i am wrong) that the drives need to be the same speed and size. I know here at IBM that our drives are the same size and speed in our servers, but not made by the same people. I would just be safe and get t he same spec drive. You might be able to partition the drive (if one is bigger) to get them to match but i really dont know about that one.

Your second question is easy, once the array is setup, it should be automatic for the data to go onto the second disk in the array. If one drive dies, then when you put the new one on, it will rebuild.

This adapter should be fine for what you need
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816132004

Oh yeah, dont rely totally on the array for backup......if the card goes to crap and corrupts both the drives, you will be s-o-l. If you want a backup, get external hdd or start putting the data on a DVD or something of that nature.

Hope this helps

 

[Gsexer]

Yup, that should do it. I was planning on buying the same size drive, I had read in other raid threads that the drives should be the same size. Even better that the card is 11 bucks!! Thanks for the help.

 

[Angry]

Watch out on those el Cheapo raid cards. Some of them, while uber cheap are uber slow and problematic.

 

[smokie mcpott]

you better back up EVERYTHING valuable on your harddrive elsewhere. in order to do a RAID setup, it will wipe your harddrive to allocate the drives to work together.. a reinstall of windows is in order then (dont forget to install the raid drivers on windows install.... when it says hit F6 for raid controllers)

and no, you cant partition a HD and still use the remaining space..its just unusable at point

 

[Gsexer]

I could back up everything to an external, and after I get the array set up, I could just recover. That simple, right?

 

[smokie mcpott]

yep shouldnt be a problem if you have an external

 

[Jeepson33s]

yep shouldnt be a problem if you have an external

Nice smokie! External backup is the only foolproof way to save your data from corruption. Just remember that the raid array is not the answer to a great backup regimine. People fight us all the time at IBM, saying stuff like....i have 12 drives in 2 raid 5 arrays...how can we loose the data. These people NEVER take into account that the controller is the achilles heel to the system. if that fails, 9 times out of 10, your dirves are corrupt!

EXTERNAL BACKUPS ARE 99.99999%

We always tell our customers that the array is a way to keep working when the drives poop out but its only a temp fix!

 

[smokie mcpott]

ive got a netgear sc101 with backups on it...as well as 2 harddrives on my server with backups
i DONT want to lose files