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RAID on the DEL Precision T3400
All,
We have recently had a disc crash on one of our back up servers which has RAID discs on it, but seems that RAID was never switched on. We have now looked at another of our servers and it seems that RAID is not switched on there either. The question is, can we now switch it on without causing problems and if so, how do we do this ? The PC in question is a Precision T3400 Intel 2 Quad CPU Q9300 @2.5 GHz.
Thanks
gwforeman
69 Posts
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October 13th, 2010 04:00
Well, you can't just "Switch it on", you need to "Set it up" and we need a lot more info to help you with that.
What drives are in the system? What kind of RAID controller do you have?
What RAID level do you want? 0, 1, 5 ??? If you want Data Protection, skip RAID 0.
You cannot just turn it on. The system would have to be imaged, then the RAID set up, then everything reloaded.
RAID 0 = FAST, but no data protection. Need at least two matching drives
RAID 1 = Good data protection. Need at least two matching drives, loose the capacity of 1, so if you have two 1G drives in RAID 1, you have 1G of space.
RAID 5 = Good data protection. Need at least three matching drives, loose the capacity of 1, so if you have three 1G drives in RAID 5, you will have 2G of space, and any of the drives can fail, and you will be protected.
There are other levels of RAID, but these are the most comonly used.
Last but not least, remember RAID is not a data backup plan. It is only a hardware failure plan. Make sure you are running regular backups. I had 5 drives in a RAID 5 config once and on a weekend TWO drives went bad. All was lost (but we had tape backup). It happens.
jigsawm2m
2 Posts
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October 13th, 2010 08:00
Ok Thanks for this.
From your description , the drives are RAID 1 as there are two of them. The one left intact seesm to have some basic formatting on it but nothing else, probably from the time the machine was set up and delivered, although i would have expected a mirror of windows to be on there if the system has ever had RAID enabled (which we specifically bought it with). We do take backups - this was the backup server that died - we have backup hardware and that was put in place immedaitely and is now happily backing up again. Its on a third machine that i have noticed we dont have RAID switched on.
The disc are Western Digital Caviar SE16 - 320 Gb LBA 625142448 - Part Number(?) WD3200AAKS
Does this help at all ?
Pete
gwforeman
69 Posts
0
October 13th, 2010 12:00
If you have two matching discs, and the system has RAID, then RAID 1 should be used. If it were me, I would ghost the server or use some other imaging software, then set up raid (which requires formatting the drives), then loading the image back on. If RAID 1 is set up and formatted, you will only see ONE logical drive.
Remember, the data on the drive(s) will be lost setting this up.
If this came with RAID, your Dell Support should be able to help you configure it.
Gary