Anyone done a RAID setup on a dv9000

I'm currently considering either a "HP Pavilion dv9045ea" (might be a special Danish version) and an Asus A6T.

I notice that the HP has two drives, so I wondered if anyone had set them up in RAID 0?

I would expect it to help quite a bit on a Laptop with 5400 rpm drives.

Thanks for any input.

 

It would go faster. But RAID-0 boot drives, that's a recipe for disaster, and a pain in the rear to get set up. If one of the drives dies, you're SOL. I'd highly recommend against it.

 

For almost any task, a single 5400 drive is perfectly fine. You really only need 7200 if you're going to do video capture and the like (but the 5400 handles this fine as well)...gives you a little boost.

I would recommend either RAID 1 (if possible), or just using one drive as your XP drive and the other as your data drive. Pitabred is right though: RAID 0 is *bad* if you do not have some other means to regularly back up your data (like an external hard drive).

 

Actually it's pretty simple to set up in Windows XP, I'm talking about software RAID - you basically install windows and then add another disk in Disk Management and it changes it to raid.

My laptop is only going to be my secondary anyway, I'm not concerned about the security.

 

AFAIK, software based raid is much slower than the hardware based solutions on desktops and (some) notebooks.

 

Nope, it's pretty much the same.

I think there was a lengthy article on Toms Hardware on it a year or so ago.

 

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In the notes of the drivers for a HP dv8000t (the first HP model with dual drives AFAIK)... It was stated that the notebook version of the controler had raid disabled. (via hardware)


.

 

Well I missed something, you can't RAID a system drive in software so either way it's a no go.

But I bought the laptop anyway and I really like it

 

Majoho,

Have you checked the driver notes to see if maybe something has changed since the dv8000t? (dv8xxxx series)


PS: How about posting the links to the info you were talking about.... I would assume you have them bookmarked?

 

It's not about the drivers, software raid is a feature of windows 2000/XP but as I mentioned you can't do it on your system disk so it doesn't really work for laptops at all.

I don't have a link but it shouldn't be hard to find on www.tomshardware.com

 

When I was reffering to drivers, I was talking about looking thru the release notes of the drivers for the SATA controller to see if any mention was made of RAID being disabled, like in the dv8000t series...

On the software RAID links, that was for maybe someone else who might benefit, not just for a laptop user.
Windows Software RAID Guide
http://www.techimo.com/articles/index.pl?photo=149
Using WindowsXP to Make RAID 5 Happen
http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/19/using_windowsxp_to_make_raid_5_happen/
Beginners Guides: Installing RAID on Desktop PCs
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=830&page=5

How to enable software RAID (mirroring) in Windows XP
http://www.vttoth.com/mirror.htm

I recently installed Windows XP on a system with two hard drives, intending to use the drives as mirrors. I then found out, much to my surprise, that mirroring is not enabled in Windows XP, not even in the so-called "professional" (?) version.

Fortunately, it appears that this is one of those features that are actually present in the operating system, only disabled. Thanks to a page I found with Google, from Tom's Hardware Guide, I knew exactly how to enable it.

The bottom line is that you need to hand-edit three binary system files and then install them even if Windows insists on "repairing" them by replacing your copies with the original versions.
Files to edit

The three files to edit are dmadmin.exe, dmconfig.dll, and dmboot.sys. The first two of these are in the system32 directory, while dmboot.sys is in system32\drivers. Here are the changes that need to be made (I use the elvis editor under Linux, which allows me to edit binary files).

dmadmin.exe
Before 00001c30 73 65 72 76 65 72 6e 74 00 00 00 00 6c 61 6e 6d servernt....lanm
00001c40 61 6e 6e 74 00 00 00 00 50 72 6f 64 75 63 74 54 annt....ProductT
After 00001c30 77 69 6e 6e 74 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 6c 61 6e 6d winnt.......lanm
00001c40 61 6e 6e 74 00 00 00 00 50 72 6f 64 75 63 74 54 annt....ProductT
dmconfig.dll
Before 00005140 4c 41 4e 4d 41 4e 4e 54 00 00 00 00 53 45 52 56 LANMANNT....SERV
00005150 45 52 4e 54 00 00 00 00 57 49 4e 4e 54 00 00 00 ERNT....WINNT...
After 00005140 4c 41 4e 4d 41 4e 4e 54 00 00 00 00 57 49 4e 4e LANMANNT....WINN
00005150 54 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 53 45 52 56 45 52 4e 54 T.......SERVERNT
dmboot.sys
Before 00011070 54 00 79 00 70 00 65 00 00 00 57 49 4e 4e 54 00 T.y.p.e...WINNT.
00011080 00 00<53>45 52 56 45 52 4e 54 00 00 00 00 4c 41 ..SERVERNT....LA
After 00011070 54 00 79 00 70 00 65 00 00 00 53 45 52 56 45 52 T.y.p.e...SERVER
00011080 4e 54<57>49 4e 4e 54 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 4c 41 NTWINNT.......LA

Note that these are slightly different from what is in Tom's Hardware Guide; I suspect the driver has been changed by Microsoft since that page has been last edited. Yes, there's a slight concern that possible future driver changes by Microsoft may render unbootable a system that was modified this way and set to boot from a RAID volume.
Replacing system files

Simply copying the edited version over the original will not work. Windows XP has a feature where it protects sensitive system files from accidental overwrites; if you copy, say, your modified version of dmboot.sys over the original, you will notice that after a few seconds, it'll revert back to the original version, even if you do the copying from the command line.

One way to overcome this difficulty is by booting from the Windows XP CD-ROM to the Windows Recovery Console, which is a DOS-like command-line environment that lets you, among other things, replace protected system files.
Establishing the mirror

From this point on you proceed as you would with Windows 2003 Server: Go into Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management, and go nuts with your dynamic volumes.
Legal and practical implications

"Hacking" a device with intentionally disabled features has been a long established practice. Is it legal? I am no expert, but I doubt that Microsoft would go after anyone with a legally obtained Windows XP license who made this modification. Just to be on the safe side, it doesn't hurt to have a valid Windows 2003 Server license (I do, through MSDN) so you could argue that you just "downgraded" from that to the "modified" version of Windows XP.

On the practical side, running a hacked version of any operating system in a production environment can be very problematic. However simple the hack is, it probably hasn't been tested for regressions the same way as real operating system components are. It may be incompatible with future hotfixes released by the vendor. Or, the vendor may release a hotfix for the hacked component, causing it to revert to an unhacked version, rendering the system unbootable.

 

Thanks for the info.

Strange that Striping is allowed but not Mirroring, I could understand RAID 5 would only be on a server version though.

I see the laptop pretty much has NO options in the BIOS, it would have been neat to be able to stripe the drives since drives tend to be the bottleneck on laptops - but at least you get to put the page file on a another drive that helps a bit.