Problem:
Attaching another drive while doing a RAID change can reformat the second drive.
Cause:
If the second drive is assigned the same unix device name that was assigned to the RAID device before it was dismounted from the system, the second drive will be reformatted.
Solution:
External drives should not be removed or attached during a RAID change operation.
RAID (redundant array of independent disks) is a method of using multiple hard disk drives to act as one. RAID is used to increase hard drive speed and storage capacity, prevent data loss in the event that one of the disks in the array physically fails, or both. As far as the operating system concerned, a RAID array will appear to be a single logical drive. RAID uses a method called striping in which the drives are broken down into small partitions. These partitions, called stripes, are distributed such that each successive stripe is on a different drive.
Important: There are many different…
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities…
The Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo drive will be released as a 600 gigabyte (GB) RAID 0 model, and a 1 terabyte (1 TB, 1000 GB) RAID 0/1 model.
RAID 1 can now be used with the OneTouch III Turbo 600 GB models with updated installation software.
Highlights
- User-configurable RAID solution
- Use RAID 0 for high performance disk striping or RAID 1 for automatic mirroring
- Up to 1 TB storage capacity
- FireWire® 800 for fast data transfer
- Oxford 924 chipset
- Pre-formatted for Mac; easily formatted for Windows®
- Available in RAID 0 only, and RAID 0 / RAID 1 (user configurable) configurations.
What does this mean?
Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo drives…
How do I change the RAID level of a My Book Premium II, My Book Pro II, My Book Studio II, or My Book Mirror Edition external hard drive?
The My Book Premium II, My Book Pro II, and My Book Studio II external hard drives are pre-configured for RAID 0 (Striped) mode for maximum capacity and accelerated performance. These products also support RAID 1 (Mirrored) mode for data protection, which dedicates half the capacity to mirror the data in both internal hard drives.
The My Book Mirror Edition external hard drive is pre-configured for RAID 1 (Mirrored) mode for maximum data protection. This drive…
Western Digital manufactures desktop edition hard drives and RAID Edition hard drives. Each type of hard drive is designed to work specifically in either a desktop computer environment or a demanding enterprise environment.
If you install and use a desktop edition hard drive connected to a RAID controller, the drive may not work correctly unless jointly qualified by an enterprise OEM. This is caused by the normal error recovery procedure that a desktop edition hard drive uses.
When an error is found on a desktop edition hard drive, the drive will enter into a deep recovery cycle to attempt to repair the error, recover…
All WD ShareSpace drives support Spanning, RAID-0 (Striping), RAID-1 (Mirroring), and RAID-5 (Redundancy with parity). Each RAID mode may or may not be available for usage based upon how many internal hard drives are installed in the enclosure.
Please Note: Based upon how the WD ShareSpace RAID is setup, the WD ShareSpace will show different available capacities:
Qty of 2 – 1TB internal hard drives:
- Spanning – 2TB
- RAID-0 – 2TB
- RAID-1 – 1TB
- RAID-5 – Not Supported
Qty of 3 – 1TB internal hard drives:
- Spanning – 3TB
- RAID-0 – 3TB
- RAID-1 – Not Supported
- RAID-5 – 2TB
Qty of 4 – 1TB internal hard drives:
- Spanning – 4TB
- RAID-0 – 4TB
- RAID-1 – Not Supported
- RAID-5 –…
Problem:
Changing from RAID-0 to RAID-1 on a My Book Studio II under Windows XP SP3 connected via 1394a (FireWire 400) fails to complete. Disk Management cannot be opened, and Cannot restart as well (Windows Freeze).
Cause:
The cause of this issue is unknown.
Resolution:
To resolve this issue, please connect the My Book Studio II via USB or 1394b (FireWire800) and perform the RAID change again.
Note: A RAID 1 array is designed for fault tolerance. You will not notice any performance increase in your computer after creating a RAID 1 array. A RAID 1 array uses the second hard drive to copy the data of the first drive. Should one of the hard drives fail, you will still be able to boot your computer using the second hard drive.
Important: After creating a RAID 1 array, the total capacity of both hard drives will not appear as usable space in Windows. Because the second hard drive is being used to store the exact same data of the first drive,…
Advantages of RAID
RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of independent Disks. With RAID enabled on a storage system you can connect two or more drives in the system so that they act like one big fast drive or set them up so that one drive in the system is used to automatically and instantaneously duplicate (or mirror) your data for real-time backup.
There are three reasons you might want a RAID system of drives.
- You need tons of storage space and you need it to be fast. (RAID 0)
- You want to instantaneously and automatically backup your data. (RAID 1)
- You want both. (RAID 5)
Which…
