looking for a solution for a Software Raid on my XP computer

Question

Recently, I purchase 2x1TB drives for my XP computer, I want to use RAID 1 for the redundancy, but the motherboard is little old and can't support that. Some articles introduce how to make it happen in windows xp, but all are failed in my machine. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windowsxp-make-raid-5-happen,925.html

I would like to know is there any existing software RAID solution available in market? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I think you need XP Pro for this. It won't work with XP Home.

Right click on your My Computer icon and choose Manage. This will open a dialog with a tree on the left, from which you can select Disk Management. Here, if you right click on a disk you will see several options, one of which is Add Mirror.... Unfortunately, that option is often unavailable (grayed out). You have to set up your disks a specific way for Windows to allow this. I don't remember the exact required setup at the moment, but this post should have given you enough new info to google the rest. It's now 1am here, so I'm going to bed ;)

Answer 2

I followed the guide which you linked a few years back and I can't recommend it even if it works. It can get you RAID1 on Windows XP, but to do that you modify a lot of system files. Later, when I installed a service pack, I guess some of those files were updated by the system and I couldn't get the system running again until I did a clean install. Not exactly the redundancy you want from RAID1.

The only good advice I can give is to stay away from that guide, and besides, RAID1 won't protect you from: user error, virus, fire, theft, dead PSU which takes the rest of the hardware with it. The major advantage is that a dead HD won't require you to reboot your system, but since you're running WinXP, I'm guessing you don't have a mission-critical server.