Master teaches you how to implement soft RAID with Win 2003

Today I will introduce you how to use Windows 2003 to implement soft RAID. This tutorial mainly introduces soft RAID, creating dynamic disks, implementing soft raid, etc. I hope that those who use this aspect should be used. Knowledge friends are a little help and learn.

I. Overview

As you know, hardware RAID solutions are fast and stable, and can effectively provide high levels of hard disk availability and redundancy. Degree, but the high price is really daunting. Fortunately, Windows 2003 provides embedded software RAID functionality, and soft RAID can implement RAID-0, RAID-1, and RAID-5. Soft RAID is not only very convenient to implement, but also saves a lot of valuable funds. It is indeed a very useful new function of Windows 2003 Server. A RAID-5 volume is a fault-tolerant volume where data and parity are intermittently distributed across three or more physical disks.

If a portion of the physical disk fails, we can recreate the data on the failed portion of the disk with the remaining data and parity. A RAID-5 volume is a good solution for data redundancy in a computer environment where most activities consist of reading data. A RAID-5 volume can be created using a hardware-based or software-based solution. With hardware-based RAID, the intelligent disk controller processes the creation and regeneration of redundant information on the disks that make up the RAID-5 volume.

The Windows Server 2003 family of operating systems provides software-based RAID, where the creation and re-generation of information on disks in a RAID-5 volume is handled by "Disk Management", in both cases, the data is All members in the cross-disk array are stored. Of course, the performance and efficiency of soft RAID cannot be compared with hard RAID. Let's start with the creation of dynamic disks, then explain how to implement soft RAID in Windows 2003 Server implementation, and finally talk about the management of soft RAID.

Second, create a dynamic disk

When installing Windows 2003 Server, the hard disk will be automatically initialized to a basic disk. We cannot create new volume sets, stripe sets, or RAID-5 groups in a basic disk partition, but only create a similar disk configuration on a dynamic disk. That is, if you want to create a RAID-0, RAID-1, or RAID-5 volume, you must use a dynamic disk. After the Windows 2003 Server installation is complete, you can use the upgrade wizard to convert them to dynamic disks.

After converting a disk from a basic disk to a dynamic disk, the disk will contain the volume instead of the disk partition. Each of these volumes is a logical part of the hard drive and you can also assign a drive letter or mount point to each volume. However, be aware that you can only create volumes on dynamic disks. Dynamic disks have several features that are better than basic disks:

Volumes can be extended to include non-contiguous spaces that can be on any available disk.

There are no restrictions on the number of volumes that can be created on each disk.

Windows 2003 stores dynamic disk configuration information on disk instead of being stored elsewhere. At the same time, this information cannot be accurately updated. Windows 2003 copies these disk configuration information to all other dynamic disks. Therefore, damage to a single disk will not affect access to data on other disks.

A hard disk can be either a basic disk or a dynamic disk, but not both, because multiple storage types cannot be combined on the same disk. However, if your computer has multiple hard drives, you can configure each drive to be basic or dynamic.

1. Upgrade from basic disk to dynamic disk:

1 Click “Start”->“All Programs>->“Administrative Tools”- >“Computer Management" option, display & "Computer Management" window.

2In the left pane, expand the “Storage”->“Disk Management" option to display all the disks installed on your computer.

3 Right-click the hard disk you want to set as the dynamic disk, and select the “Upgrade to Dynamic Disk” option in the pop-up shortcut menu to display the “Upgrade to Dynamic Disk” dialog box.

4Select the disk to be upgraded, and then click the “OK” button to display the “Disk to be upgraded” dialog box, where the user is required to upgrade the hard disk to be upgraded to a dynamic disk. confirm. The reason for this is simple because this upgrade is irreversible. That is, a basic disk can be upgraded to a dynamic disk, but a dynamic disk cannot be restored to a basic disk.

5 Click the “Upgrade” button to display the “Disk Management” prompt box. The system again asks the user to confirm the disk upgrade. When the disk is upgraded to a dynamic disk, the operating system such as Windows98/Me will no longer be bootable from the disk.

6 Click the "Yes> button to display the “Upgrade Disk” warning box. At this point, the prompt to be upgraded will be forcibly removed and the user will be asked to confirm the operation further.

7 Click the "yes" button and the system will begin the disk upgrade process. When the upgrade is complete, the “Confirm & rdquo; warning box will be displayed, click the "OK" button will restart the computer to complete the disk upgrade process.

There are several issues to be aware of when upgrading to dynamic disks:

You must be logged in as an administrator or a member of a management group to complete the process. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent us from completing this step.

After upgrading a basic disk to a dynamic disk, you can no longer change the dynamic volume back to the basic partition. The only way to do this is to delete all dynamic volumes on the disk and then use the "Restore to Basic Disk" command.

Programs running on those disks should be closed before upgrading the disk.

To ensure a successful upgrade, any disk to be upgraded must contain at least 1MB of unallocated space. When creating a partition or volume on a disk, the Disk Management tool will automatically reserve this space, but there may not be this space on a disk with partitions or volumes created by other operating systems.

A disk with a sector size greater than 512 bytes cannot be upgraded from a basic disk to a dynamic disk.

Once the upgrade is complete, the dynamic disk cannot contain partitions or logical drives, nor can it be accessed by other operating systems other than Windows 2003. Previous123Next page Total 3 pages