A mirror raid is not an altenative to a backup.
Depending on the raid controler, if a hd fails the system may not report
which hd has failed, and it may go down. It also maybe that you cannot
reboot untill you split the raid and disconnect the failed HD, once you have
determined which HD has failed.
After experiencing many problems with onboard raid, as supplied on many
mobos, I purchased a reasonably high end raid card ($380) I know this unit
will show which HD has a problem and will continue running the sys when a HD
fails. I also added a third hot swap HD which the card will automatically
use to rebuild if one fails.
PS I still have onsite/offsite backups

"RealtorJohn" <MSnewsgroup@pamgrice.com> wrote in message
news:21C1C273-A929-4D26-8F95-9FD672D63234@microsoft.com...
> Let me straighten out any misconceptions. All of the current drives have
only
> been installed on this machine.
>
> I had a faulty HD from which no data coiuld be retreived, (sent to a
> recovery company), in the mean time I installed a SG 160GB and installed
XP
> and reloaded most of my programs. The damaged HD was under warrenty so
> WD sent me a refurbished HD that was the same model and size of the old
one.
> I was intending to use the WD dirive strictly as backup for data, I didn't
> want to loose all of my data again.
>
> After about 3 weeks the SG 160GB XP installation started failing and I
> couldn't get it to repair. I then installed XP on the refurbished WD drive
> and reinstalled the HW and SW again.
>
> In the meantime I investigated using a RAID configuration with a mirror
> solution to try to avoid more down time, I depend on my computer everyday
I
> can't afford to have it unusable, it needs to be available 100% of the
time.
> So I came up with the brilliant idea of multiple boots.
>
> My idea was to use the mirror drive as the main boot, and have one on each
> of the other drives, just in case.
>
> Most of my programs had been installed on the F: drive, of couse it was
the
> C: drive at the time. No fear I can use Norton Windoctor to change any
> designations to whatever they need to be changed to. And no there has not
> been a clean install on the F: drive. I read DL's responce and I will try
to
> repair the XP installation before I proceed any further.
>
> I understand about having progams on a seperate partition or disk is not
of
> much value now. It seems to me that W95 would reinstall and any programs
on
> your HD would automatically be registered and installed for use. What a
crime
> that XP doesn't work that way.
>
> Thank you both, DL and Ken. I'll let you know how I make out.
> --
> Thanks in advance,
> Realtor John
>
>
> "Ken Blake, MVP" wrote:
>
> > RealtorJohn wrote:
> >
> > > I had a XP crash from which I couln't recover. I installed into my
> > > home built 2 80 GB SG drives and set them up as a RAID 1. I still
> > > have the drive with all of my programs that had been loaded onto it,
> > > XP just doesn't work. I am using PnP to put all of my hardware back
> > > into the new RAID 1 drive (E setup.
> > > My set up is:
> > > ASUS P4C800 Deluxe MB
> > > 1GB RAM
> > > Built in USB ports (4 are activated)
> > > Built in Network connection (RJ45 Port)
> > > Built in Sound using Sound MAx software.
> > > Uses Promise Fst Trak 378 Driver for the RAID
> > > I have also make the system a multiple boot with an XP system on C:,
> > > E:, & F: C: is SG 160GB
> > > D: is a 22GB portion of C:
> > > E: is 2 SG 80 GB Raid 1 Mirrorred drives (I've had 2 crashes in 6
> > > months) F:is a WD 120GB a rebuilt replacement for the the original
> > > failure.
> > >
> > > F: boot does not work and that is the disk with all of the installed
> > > HW & SW
> > >
> > > Certainly there must be a way to have the progams already installed
> > > on F: to act as if they have been installed on the E: and D: drives
> > > without actually installing them.
> > >
> > > I hope someone can tell me how to do this. It is most distressing to
> > > be required to reinstall about 50 (including utilities) programs.
> >
> >
> > Are you saying that you have installed programs on F: and that these
> > programs had been installed under Windows XP, but Windows XP has since
been
> > cleanly reinstalled?
> >
> > Sorry, but there is no way to use those installed programs, and they
have to
> > be reinstalled from scratch. Installed programs (all but the very
occasionl
> > tiny program) have many components and references all over the operating
> > system (in the registry and elsewhere).When you reinstalled Windows, all
of
> > this was lost.
> >
> > This is the main reason why having a separate drive or partition for
> > installed programs isn't really a useful thing to do.
> >
> > --
> > Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
> > Please reply to the newsgroup
> >
> >
> >