RAID drives

[Liam Proven]

2008/4/24 Richard Cloutier <rrcloutier at gmail.com>:
>   I have Windows XP configured on two 250 GB drives configured as RAID 0.
> Can I load Ubuntu 8.xx on this drive?
>
> Richard Cloutier

Almost certainly not. Unless you have a proper hardware RAID
controller, *not* one of the cheap SIL or similar
motherboard-integrated RAID controllers. By proper hardware, I mean an
add-on card from ALI or 3ware or someone; you will know if you bought
one, they typically cost more than the drives they control:
£150/US$300+.

Motherboard integrated RAID chips just use software to fool the OS
into thinking that 2 drives are one.

RAID0 is just striping, done for performance; it's not real RAID. The
R in RAID stands for "redundant"; a stripe is not redundant. If either
disk fails, you lose everything on both drives.

Back up your XP install to an external drive using a boot disk and an
imaging app such as PowerQuest DriveImage or Norton Ghost. Break the
stripe up into 2 separate disks in your BIOS. Restore XP onto the 1st
drive; put Ubuntu onto the now-empty 2nd drive. You will only get half
the space but you probably won't notice the loss of performance;
striped disks on workstations are a red herring, the claimed
performance benefits are largely spurious.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com • MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com
Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk • Skype: liamproven • ICQ: 73187508