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RAID - does it work at system level, or just for data?

  • Thread starter Thread starter blackbeltninja
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blackbeltninja

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Hey guys

Hoping for a little advice, here. We are rebuilding a system which drives some specialist hardware here at work. Currently, all our data is on an auto-backup to a remote server, which makes recovery fairly easy since it's done daily.

I was wondering about a RAID1, though using 2 hard disks - I understand we could use it to mirror the data simply inside the machine. I'm wondering, though, whether that also works for the OS and system settings - in the event one of the disks fails, can I set it up so the entire system is mirrored on the 2nd hdd, or is it only data you have instructed the machine to put onto the RAID? So basically, if it dies, do you only have a copy of what you told it to copy, or can you set it up so that Windows/drivers/installed applications etc can all run off the other disk as well with zero downtime apart from going into the bios and telling it to boot off the other disk (assuming you need to do that and it doesn't know from the raid settings)?

This may be a stupid question... but I'm clueless about this stuff. Any advice would be welcomed.

Thanks
-d-
 
A raid works on the physical level (assuming you don't use a software raid, but a real raid controller). You will only see them as one drive in the operating system. So you cannot copy something "off" the raid, unless you have a raid drive and extra ide/sata drives that are not part of the raid. Everything on drive1 is mirrored to drive2. If drive1 fails, you insert a new drive into the drive1 slot and the raid controller will mirror all data from drive2 to drive1 again (this process is called a rebuild). Depending on the raid controller, you can even insert a third drive as a hot spare. When one of the raid drives (drive1 or drive2) fails, the controller will automatically and immediately replace the broken drive with the hot spare drive3.
 
RAID provides hardware redundancy, but is not a software backup.

RAID1 gives you protection from a physical drive failure; at the same time, if a file is deleted off drive 1 or the operating system is corrupted, that deletion or corruption will likewise be mirrored onto the second drive.
 
Thanks guys.

So... if I set up a raid on 2 HDDs when I install the OS on the new machine and one drive fails, will the machine still run on the other one alone or do I need to replace the failed one in there before anything will happen? Basically, if the drive fails, what is my downtime if I don't have a 3rd drive in storage somewhere which I can use immediately?

One last thing - do I need raid-specific drives in order to make it happen, or will any hdd work on the motherboard's raid controller?

Thanks
-d-
 
blackbeltninja said:
Thanks guys.

So... if I set up a raid on 2 HDDs when I install the OS on the new machine and one drive fails, will the machine still run on the other one alone or do I need to replace the failed one in there before anything will happen? Basically, if the drive fails, what is my downtime if I don't have a 3rd drive in storage somewhere which I can use immediately?
Click to expand...

your system will beep angrily at you and tell you to replace the drive ASAP, but it should work fine off just the one drive while you buy a new one.

One last thing - do I need raid-specific drives in order to make it happen, or will any hdd work on the motherboard's raid controller?
Click to expand...

nope. the only strict requirements are 2 drives of the same size (well, one can be larger, but the RAID size will be capped at the size of the smallest drive) and speed.
 
Yeah, but for a server you should get drives that are certified as 24/7 drives by the manufacturer.
 
Thanks again guys.

It's not going to be a server, Corny, it'll be a workstation driving a mass spectrometer linked to a high-performance liquid chromatography system in order to determine therapeutic drug levels in the blood/urine of patients and lab animals. Although it will be on our intranet for remote monitoring and for backup, it's not going to be functioning as a server of any sort. Having said that, it does kinda run 24/7...

-d-
 
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