1. 

   Nice walkthrough! A couple of questions… How will XP inform you in case of a drive failure? Will XP automatically syncronize a replaced drive? Is it possible to add spare drives? Is it possible to increase the raids total size by replacing all of the drives one by one(i.e. from 500GB to 1TB)? Is it possible to increase the number of drives?

   Comment by Roger — March 8, 2009 @ 5:39 am

2. 

   I’m not totally sure how XP informs users when a drive fails, luckily I haven’t had one fail yet. I would imagine that it pops up a notification in the event of a drive failure. As far as rebuilding the array after a drive failure, I believe that the user has to install a replacement drive and then go into disk management and simply click a button to rebuild the array.

   I don’t think it’s possible to add a drive or increase the array size in any way. This isn’t a limitation of XP, but a limitation of RAID 5 in general. From everything that I’ve read the only RAID that can grow like you’re asking is a DROBO.

   Comment by admin — March 9, 2009 @ 10:24 pm

3. 

   Many high end RAID solution do allow OCE with RAID5 (Online Capacity Expansion), though this is not a speedy process.

   Comment by Daniel — March 21, 2009 @ 8:07 pm

4. 

   I will try the software raid 5 this weekend. Thanks for the tutorial.
   I already have 2 hardware RAID 5.
   I will try and compare the read/write speed.
   I will restart the computer without a disk and put it back to try the rebuild fonction (simulate disk fail).
   And I will try to connect the RAID 5 on an other computer (simulate config fail/upgrade).
   Thanks a lot. I’ll give you feedfack the nextweek.
   Alx.

   Comment by alx — March 27, 2009 @ 7:43 am

5. 

   Hello,
   Thanks for the tutorial. I’m trying to follow the same steps, but in Windows Vista 64 Business. I’ve turned my 6 new HDs into dynamic drives, but in Vista, I don’t have the option to go to a New Volume Wizard. I just have the options to do a simple volume, striped volume, or spanned volume, none of which is a RAID 5 option.

   Any suggestions?
   Kevin

   Comment by Kevin T — May 3, 2009 @ 1:20 pm

6. 

   Kevin, I don’t believe there is a hack to allow software RAID 5 in Vista. The best option for you is to look into a hardware RAID solution.

   Comment by admin — May 4, 2009 @ 1:29 pm

7. 

   Wow, thanks for the well documented tutorial. I’ll be trying this very soon. By the way, I’ve added dozens of hard disks (new and used) to XP installations, and I’ve never had a problem with checking the ‘quick format’ option in the New Volume Wizard / Format Volume dialog box. This will bring a new 1TB drive online in under 10 seconds.

   It sounds like it’s best to max out the number and size of your drives when you set this up since it appears that you can’t add any new drives once the RAID is set up.

   Thanks again !

   Comment by Brian — May 24, 2009 @ 2:09 am

8. 

   The burning to cd part is not really necessary… just put the files into c:\

   Also backing up should be recommended somewhere in the howto imo.

   For reference on various raid configurations the original microsoft howtos for 2000 or 2003 server can be used.

   Thanks for putting this up… I was this close to buying a raid controller for no good reason.

   Comment by oskar — May 24, 2009 @ 4:23 pm

9. 

   hello, just wanted to know some thing. i have a computer to reinstall xp on, he has 2 hdd and whats them set up as one hdd, can that be done or would i need 3 hdd, one for windows and 2 for the raid?

   Comment by Martin — May 27, 2009 @ 11:04 am

10. 

    Hi,
    Thanks!

    1) You saved me.
    2) Please email where you got those 3 files, just curious, ty.

    I had problems before my other computer died;
    windows wanting chkdsk and getting stuck.

    NOW that I have all the raids I want, I got I/O error creating a mirror.
    I formatted the suspected volume;
    I took the percentage at which it got stuck, times the size of the drive, calculated where the problem was, and managed to get the bad area down to the minimum 8 meg size.
    I then did a fast format on it; doesn’t get stuck that way; and removed the drive letter so that I would not accidentally put anything there.
    Then, thanks to dynamic disks, I created an expanded volume, which has the 8 meg bad part right in the middle, and then successfully mirrored it. THUMBS UP !!! ty

    Yes, I’m one of those people that rely too much on Windows and the Bios’s SMART program to check for me;
    I now see that chkdsk is oh so important, and now know how to use it to my advantage.

    Best regards.
    ps: My xp pro says I should be able to raid 0 and 1, in the help file.

    Comment by just a guy — May 31, 2009 @ 4:57 pm

11. 

    Oh,
    I also wanted to mention my SP3 update test:

    xp pro
    - install cd has SP2
    - did the fix
    - then I mirrored a small volume
    - then I updated to SP3
    - mirrored volumes showed as Failed, but the correct color
    - I broke the mirror, before noticing there was no drive letter on it/them.
    - I then put drive letters on each part of broken mirrored volumes
    - The file was still in both halves.

    Makes sense, as xp pro can, at the least, read mirrors… …so no loss.

    - if you try the above and can’t do it, then I may be mistaken and
    - that just means I did the fix again after SP3 update,
    - and then messed with breaking the mirror.

    Just the same, no loss of info.

    Comment by just a guy — May 31, 2009 @ 5:28 pm

12. 

    note 3:
    The only firewalls that work with dynamic disks:

    1) The built-in windows firewall, I have it set to no exceptions too.

    2) pc-tools firewall, but way too complicated.

    On the 2 times I converted to dynamic disk, zone alarm free was installed; and both times vsmon.exe just kept restarting, up to 50% cpu, on a p4.

    Comment by just a guy — June 2, 2009 @ 3:44 pm

13. 

    Note 4+ :
    To do the ‘fix’, I just started in SAFE mode and changed the files.

    Martin… …I tried to install xp pro to a dynamic-disk, windows would have nothing to do with it. The chance of installing it to a striped set, from what I’ve read, is a no-go.

    Comment by just a guy — June 2, 2009 @ 6:41 pm

14. 

    Well, I finally got around to setting my box up, and even though I indicated that the ‘quick format’ checkbox should work, it doesn’t when RAID5 is chosen.

    So Jon is right – you have to sit around and wait; mine has run for 7 hours and is only 23% done (7 x 1.5TB might be the reason…).

    Also, I had no love in getting my DVD drive to be recognized once I got into recovery mode. Several notes:

    - As Martin says above, there is no need to burn to CD (bye bye 5 cents..). Just copy the files to a folder on your C drive.

    - You apparently (at least in my case) even with an admin login, can only read folders INSIDE C:\WINDOWS, so you’ll have to copy your files to a subfolder in there, or as ‘just a guy’ says above, you might be able to do the file copying while in safe mode.

    - Prior to copying the dm* files over to the indicated folders, make sure to rename the originals ‘just in case’.

    Comment by Brian — June 3, 2009 @ 7:16 pm

15. 

    Bummer,
    I like to kill power to computer when it freezes, and I do alot of ‘dangerous’ stuff, as it’s called, but when I restart,,, …yup, it has to resynch. hehe

    Comment by just a guy — June 4, 2009 @ 5:42 pm

16. 

    Hi Jon!
    Need a nag to get a forum started?
    …some smart helpful folk come here, and I’ll be sending people this way…

    Comment by just a guy — June 4, 2009 @ 6:18 pm

17. 

    Found a firewall solution: ashampoo_firewall120.exe (ver. 1.20)
    I run it with win xp pro firewall on, too; xp part does the incoming blocking, and the other one does the out going blocking.
    why:
    - shampoo, for some reason, has a check-mark to run in server mode, for each program you configure, also, it doesn’t pass the Shields Up stealth tests, on its own.
    I like:
    – lots of detail about what you’re making rule for.
    – only info needed by them to get the free-key, yes it’s free, is an email address.

    note: Outpost ran ok, but I wanted to try others first.

    what did not work, probably due to dynamic disks, or had too little control:
    - zone alarm
    - netveda
    - primedius
    - ghostwall
    - spf.msi
    - safetynet
    - securepoint
    - desktopFirewall
    - wfwpam

    Not tried yet:
    - online armor

    Comment by just a guy — June 6, 2009 @ 1:06 am

18. 

    FIREWALL FOR DYNAMIC DISKS

    Jetico won the race; came in late and fought hard. (and free free and great)

    Comment by just a guy — June 8, 2009 @ 1:05 am

19. 

    It is not necessary to boot from windows CD and do the copying in recovery mode. I booted my PC normally, copied it to the right places using a bat file, where after Windows notifies you that important files has been replaced, click “cancel” and then “keep new files”. It works on my PC. I copied it in the administrator account.

    Here’s the bat file:

    @echo off
    echo Make sure 6 files are copied:
    copy dmboot.sys %systemroot%\system32\drivers /Y
    copy dmboot.sys %systemroot%\system32\dllcache /Y
    copy dmconfig.dll %systemroot%\system32 /Y
    copy dmconfig.dll %systemroot%\system32\dllcache /Y
    copy dmadmin.exe %systemroot%\system32 /Y
    copy dmadmin.exe %systemroot%\system32\dllcache /Y
    echo System needs to be restarted,
    pause
    shutdown -r -t 10

    Comment by Lucka — July 5, 2009 @ 11:34 am

20. 

    Lots of wonderful information here.

    I have had several faik-raid solutions in the past,
    and am looking into this OS level solution.

    Has any one found any free RAID monitoring software
    for this yet, or does XP have something built in?

    Has any one tried the Raid2Raid from diskinternals yet?
    http://download.cnet.com/Raid-2-Raid/3000-2248_4-189685.html

    Is this capable of the monitoring, or would it simply be achieving
    similar results as having XP handle the RAIDing?

    Comment by DigitalArtifact — July 5, 2009 @ 4:05 pm

21. 

    After digging for countless hours, I have come across what may be a simple solution.
    http://www.anchor.com.au/hosting/dedicated/monitoring_windows_software_raid

    The provided script is a VB script, but I am guessing a fairly feature rich solution
    could be expanded from it. I prefer Python to VB, and would imagine a slick GUI with some added features such as scheduling, logging, and email could easily be written using this concept.

    I hope others will find this useful.
    Thanks for putting together this page.

    Comment by DigitalArtifact — July 6, 2009 @ 5:08 am

22. 

    I used the bat file Lucka posted. The files copied over fine. I said cancel to the files being changed and then kept the unrecognised versions. The sys reboots. When I go into diskmgmt and go to create new volume I still don’t get RAID 5 option? I’ve updated to SP3 before running the bat file.

    Any thoughts?

    Comment by Karl — July 9, 2009 @ 5:59 am

23. 

    The three links (dll, sys, exe) you posted are no longer valid; changing the domain from optimiz3.com to jonfleck.com corrects it and allows the files to be downloaded.

    Comment by Adam — July 10, 2009 @ 11:30 pm

24. 

    I just fixed the links to dmadmin.exe, dmboot.sys and dmconfig.dll, thanks for pointing that out.

    Comment by admin — July 11, 2009 @ 11:26 am

25. 

    I didn’t check Raid5, but be sure you have 3 seperate hard drives with space, and maybe, 3 completely empty hard drives.

    Comment by just a guy — July 12, 2009 @ 2:18 am

26. 

    Jon, nice look ! :cheers: and hope you keep the jonfleck.com forwarding for a while, as I’ve given that address to others. (was sorta hoping to see the pic i sent ya.

    Comment by just a guy — July 12, 2009 @ 2:20 am

27. 

    I didn’t have any luck with Lucka’s method either. Even though they seemed to copy, they didn’t stay. However, I decided to take that idea, and make a rescue compatible batch file that does work. I created the batch file “setup.bat”

    copy dmboot.sys C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers
    copy dmboot.sys C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache
    copy dmconfig.dll C:\WINDOWS\system32
    copy dmconfig.dll C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache
    copy dmadmin.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32
    copy dmadmin.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache

    I created a directory called “RAID” in “C:\WINDOWS” (It MUST be in the WINDOWS directory)
    Put the batch file, and the 3 files downloaded from here, in the “RAID” directory.
    Boot into rescue console from disk.
    type:
    cd raid

    then type:
    batch setup.bat

    After it says all the files copied, type
    exit

    This system is a fresh install SP3 and was fully updated
    before I ran the batch file. Worked great.

    Comment by DigitalArtifact — July 13, 2009 @ 7:41 am

28. 

    Thanks! Your instructions are the most efficient. I appreciate the pre-hacked files.

    Comment by Nasanaeru — July 20, 2009 @ 1:08 pm

29. 

    sorry folks, jetico.com has changed their site; i can not find v1.0.
    I have emailed for information to see what’s up, and make sure i have not installed a hackers version.
    - what they show is not free at all.

    Comment by just a guy — July 21, 2009 @ 7:44 am

30. 

    Jetico has not yet replied, soooooooooo…
    …This thing even gives me MAC address of offending computers!

    I will get my copy of v1 : which says FREE right on it, and as I said above, seems like they nolonger support it : to the admin here, so that maybe he’ll offer downloads of it. (Then I’ll right a ‘who what where’ for it; it’s odd but so needs one.)

    Comment by just a guy — July 23, 2009 @ 3:03 am

31. 

    ~write… (not tired lol)

    Comment by just a guy — July 23, 2009 @ 3:15 am

32. 

    i’m not try yet, but can i use this raid-5 solution for usb 4-bay enclosure ?

    Comment by iGnUs — July 26, 2009 @ 10:50 pm

33. 

    It depends how the drives show up in the enclosure. If the drives show up as individual drives then RAID 5 would work. If the drives show up as one big drive then RAID 5 wouldn’t work.

    Comment by admin — July 26, 2009 @ 10:55 pm

34. 

    …jetico v1 does NOT protect before user logon… …I’m still searching… …no reply from Jetico yet…

    Comment by just a guy — July 27, 2009 @ 5:10 pm

35. 

    …Oh!… …I disable ethernet card every time before shutting down… …have its icon showing near clock so it’s a quick: r-click ‘d’, operation… …phew, I’m glad I’m paranoid…

    Comment by just a guy — July 27, 2009 @ 5:21 pm

36. 

    This working without any trouble in my VMware environment (had to test it before i acctually do it on my computer).
    But it leaves some problems if i should do this RAID5 on my physical computer, since i have a dualboot, with XP and Vista on the same disk.
    So, my question is, what if i do this hax and make it work properly in my XP-environment (XP is what i normally use). What will happen with this Raid-setup when i login to the vista? ^^ I feel, somewhere deep in side me, that it will fail, hard..

    Comment by Jokohanho — July 31, 2009 @ 2:29 am

37. 

    I personally haven’t tested this, but I imagine the array wouldn’t be harmed it just wouldn’t be visible in Vista. You could test in VMware by booting Vista on the VM that has the RAID array on it and see if it negatively affects it.

    Comment by admin — July 31, 2009 @ 2:37 am

38. 

    Well. I dont need to get the disk work in Vista, so thats perfect, if it will be like that (since i have only vista as a game-logon, since XP doesnt make my graphic cards work properly) so matter in fact, i just need to install the games on the vista partition (even tho this slow down the game abit, since its better to play from another disk).
    but i had other problems with vista and xp recently. I had my normal partitions formated in XP (2 disks with 2 partitions on each, with 1Tbyte data) and when i logged into Vista it converted the partitions to volyms and when i logged back into XP i needed to import foreign disks. i succeded with one. but the other disk failed and i got errors in my loggbook that i couldnt solve, it was something with “the disk-group allready exists). And therefor i had to logg into vista again, copy the files to a usb-disk and back to xp again, formate the lost disk and copy the files over again..
    So my experiences with XP and Vista dualboot and disks havnt been any good ones

    Comment by Jokohanho — July 31, 2009 @ 2:50 am

39. 

    I came to this page via,
    http://www.windowsreference.com/windows-xp/how-to-add-software-raid-5-support-for-windows-xp/

    Has anybody have found a problem to the reboot-offline problem?

    Comment by sayg — August 9, 2009 @ 6:35 am

40. 

    I don’t do Raid5 but ‘whoever’ will need more info.
    Setup:
    I have 3 disks, all dynamic, xp on disk 1, swappartition striped on 0 & 2, programfiles striped on 0 & 2(diff. volumes)…

    Do you have other issues, like the with the time? re: is battery dead on mobo?
    - do you kill power to powersupply after turning it off? or is power supply always ‘live’.

    stuff like that …

    Comment by just a guy — August 9, 2009 @ 3:54 pm

41. 

    jon,
    a link to updated pics, like what I sent you,
    have to download them for full resolution:
    http://www.smokey-services.eu/forums/index.php/topic,1482.msg70744.html#msg70744
    - it’s shows how network blocks can be split-up or grouped;
    the only possible starting numbers are on grey line,
    and each grey number’s possible block-ending is below it.
    - the corresponding netmask number is also there, and color-coded.

    Comment by just a guy — August 10, 2009 @ 2:55 am

42. 

    Just a guy,
    Sorry, I didn’t realize you were talking at me. I am still not sure but anyways…
    I am not sure if explaining the setup will make any difference (it seems that it’s independent of Disk setup) but here it goes: I have 2 SSD @ ich8r RAID0. This is my system drive and it has WinXP SP3 in it. I have 4 1.5 TB HDD @ RAID5 (on WinXP + sw raid 5 hack). Currently it’s approx. 4.5 TB unformated volume. Formatting it w/ NTFS did not make any difference. It’s always offline when I reboot.
    The system drive boots up nice and I don’t believe I have any other issues including powersupply. I certainly do not have any problem w/ MB battery b/c it remembers my BIOS settings.

    Comment by sayg — August 12, 2009 @ 11:34 am

43. 

    sayg, next thing i’d check is:
    BEFORE doing anything after bootup,
    open taskmgr.exe and Prt Scr button it and save to bitmap,
    and then see if anything else starts after you go into manager and
    start getting drives recognized.
    you might need to change a service from MANUEL to AUTO.
    …just a thought.

    Comment by just a guy — August 12, 2009 @ 9:09 pm

44. 

    services link I use:
    http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/Services/Application_Layer_Gateway_Service.htm

    Comment by just a guy — August 12, 2009 @ 9:11 pm

45. 

    ARP spoofing is gonna grow, and it’s so easy!
    I protect myself by blocking ARP, and with: (on a win xp pro)
    an arp.bat file in the startup folder, with these lines:

    arp -s ip-address-of-gateway mac-address-of-gateway-nic
    arp -a
    pause

    My firewall lets me see/find the MAC address,
    Yes, my gateway changes, but it’s an easy change,
    - will try multiple ip’s on same MAC address in arp.bat file
    The pause is so I can see that it happened.
    (also have a rule in firewall that’s logged when ARP has problems.)
    –(ARP cache is only in memory, and needs re-configuring every time I boot up.)

    That’s how I see things; that’s what i’ve done. CHEERS

    Comment by just a guy — August 14, 2009 @ 8:46 pm

46. 

    ARP Update:
    I realized I could cause problems with my ISP, not knowing i’m online, so

    I allow ARP protocol with firewall,
    after connecting to internet, wait 10 seconds, then run the arp.bat file with lines:

    arp -a
    arp -d *
    arp -s Gateway’s-IP Gateway’s-MAC
    arp -a
    pause

    explained:
    arp -a # should show something, this way I know the ISP ‘sees’ me
    arp -d * # clears the arp cache (I think one entry per NIC in your computer)
    arp -s … # puts that information in the arp cache as a: -s = static (not dynamic)
    # a dynamic setting of the IP won’t reset a static one.
    arp -a # shows me the new static setting WHICH SHOULD match the first one,
    # if they don’t match, I know I got a new IP myself from ISP and
    # might have to change my -s line.
    # I have found that one MAC can have many IPs, but
    # one IP can only have one MAC

    then I block ARP protocol with my firewall.

    Comment by just a guy — August 15, 2009 @ 10:36 pm

47. 

    actually, you will see the MAC you need to copy after you connect to the internet and, in start / run, type cmd, and in there type arp -a. ( copy the line it gives you )

    Comment by just a guy — August 16, 2009 @ 1:31 pm

48. 

    I’m sorry, but I still don’t quite get it.
    I’ve got two discs (same size, same manufacturer), with disc one split into four partitions (one each for windows, programmes, data and swap (i. e. the pagefile.sys)) and disc two yet unallocated.
    What I want to do is set up a RAID1 with the solution you provided. So far, I’ve applied the raid-patch, to enable raid-functionality.
    What I don’t know yet is whether I only need to convert the 2nd disc to a dynamic disc, or both discs. I also don’t quite get whether I need to create four volumes on the 2nd disc (once it’s converted to a dynamic disc), with each volume within the ‘mirror’ representing its respective partition from the ‘master’. Or is it that I still haven’t figured out that partitions are one thing and volumes are something different, meaning that they handle one or more partitions within one volume?
    Any information helping me out here is greatly appreciated.
    Thx.

    Comment by Biosfear — August 17, 2009 @ 7:14 am

49. 

    both disks need to by dynamic.
    you need unallocated space on both drives.
    enter the size you want when setting up the raid, then choose other drive to use, it will take same size. (mirror will be 1 gig on each disk to give 1 gig useable, striped will be 2 x 1 gig from each added up to give 1 gig useable)
    from what i can tell, it’s just dynamic volumes. there is no more physical, logical stuff.
    tip: swap at start of drives, for speed.

    Comment by just a guy — August 20, 2009 @ 8:55 pm

50. 

    if i remember correctly, to ‘dynamic’ize your windows partition, it needs to reboot. I don’t think (but am not sure) you lose windows.(pretty sure i’ve done it)
    don’t go thinking you will get windows on a raid… no go with this way of doing it.

    Comment by just a guy — August 20, 2009 @ 8:57 pm

51. 

    > don’t go thinking you will get windows on a raid… no go with this way of doing it.

    Oh, I believe there is, and I think I’ve found the explanation I was looking for.
    Instead of a right click on the dynamic disc itself to bring up the context menue (as shown in your screenshots), one needs to right click on the respective partition to get a different context menue with one option being “add mirror”, a mirror which is then created on the 2nd dynamic disc. With both discs being of the same size and the procedure performed for each of the partitions on the 1st disc, I believe that what you get is exactly a software raid1. I’ve tried it in VMware, and it worked.
    Look here:
    http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1025304/setup_raid1_on_windows_xp_professional/

    Comment by Biosfear — August 21, 2009 @ 9:24 am

52. 

    I always assume the clicking-here-and-there has already been done.
    is it all working ok for you?
    - also, I have nothing but dynamic disks.
    pic: http://www.screenshotdumpster.com/img/E2nu917072/New_Bitmap_Image.jpg
    

    Comment by just a guy — August 22, 2009 @ 2:19 am

53. 

    forgot to say,
    pic also shows what to do with a bad sector/section.
    - my error checking got stuck, so i saved what i could and then found the bad spot.
    – the process is tedious, but works.
    (split bad area in 2, error check both halves until you find the bad spot, split it in 2, error check both halves until…)
    - got it down to 8 megs, and removed its drive letter.
    – now rest of drive is stil useable; as in pic my E drive goes around it, and mirrors with drive 1.

    Comment by just a guy — August 22, 2009 @ 2:24 am

54. 

    > is it all working ok for you?

    Err, I’ll have to wait a few more days before I can assamble the whole thing back together. I fried my other computer’s CPU while trying something else with a different motherboard. Apparently it didn’t work, and now I’m going to have to sit tight until the replacement CPU arrives.

    One more thing:
    windows signals a lot of warnings before it lets you transform a basic into a dynamic disc, telling you that the disc won’t be readable by any other system, bla bla bla. But, can a dynamic disc be cloned by tools such as “norton ghost” or “acronis true image”. Yeah, I know, why clone when you’ve got yourself a raid, but still, is it possible?

    Comment by Biosfear — August 22, 2009 @ 9:38 am

55. 

    …the disc won’t be readable by any other system, bla bla bla.

    I love that line, less ability for hackers to do their garbage,,, wish i knew if linux could still get at it, anyway.

    …Yeah, I know, why clone when you’ve got yourself a raid,

    cloning is what most do with a fresh install of their OS + security updates + service pack ummm sp3 now + directx 9or10 +++, and again, windows doesn’t recognize raid when doing a fresh install; so cloning is still smart.
    - Can it be done still? don’t know, search the forums, I have seen others’ concerns with dynamic disks here and there, re. firewalls, anti-virus…(now if you want to try a single-volume(or a basic disk) win xp install, clone it, then try to put that on a raid, that would be nice feedback.)

    Comment by just a guy — August 23, 2009 @ 7:07 pm

56. 

    Well, the reason for me to go and set up a raid now is quite simple:
    until now my computer has just had one hdd. When I tried to burn a dvd and the process got stuck because of a read error I got suspicious and checked it. As it turned out the hdd has got bad sectors.
    While it’s still operational I’m going to clone it to a replacement and after that set up the so-to-speak 2nd replacement disc as the raid1-mirror.
    Proceeding in that order should go smoothly. But while I was preparing the whole thing I thought whether it was still possible – say in a year’s time, or whatever – to create a cloned backup-image of any one of the hdds within the raid1. As far as backing up essential data is concerned, paranoia is my new best friend …

    Comment by Biosfear — August 24, 2009 @ 11:03 am

57. 

    don’t forget to read upwards on the page about how i saved my hdd that has a bad sector.(it’s in the pic too)

    Comment by just a guy — August 24, 2009 @ 1:13 pm

58. 

    I did read that, but I’m not comfortable with keeping on using a hdd that I know to have bad sectors, even though there is a way to seemingly keep the section contained. My philosophy has always been that once a hdd shows bad sectors it needs to be replaced since its life time is obviously up and if one keeps it running it’s only going to get worse.

    Comment by Biosfear — August 25, 2009 @ 2:22 pm

59. 

    but if you’re mirrored, no harm.

    Comment by just a guy — August 26, 2009 @ 9:54 pm

60. 

    bad sectors:
    I’ve also had the experience of using a zero’ing program on a harddrive to wipe it, that’s from bit 1 to bit ‘last’, and bad sectors disappeared.

    Comment by just a guy — September 4, 2009 @ 2:12 pm

61. 

    This looks really useful, especially since some RAID controllers can be picky about drives.

    I couldn’t quite ascertain from the posts here, but does anyone know a version of this, or other software, that one might try to get this working in XP x64?

    Comment by Charlie — September 4, 2009 @ 10:18 pm

62. 

    i’ve been checking this site couple times a day, and it’s sept.6 and just now your post sept.4 shows up…
    I’d try maybe try an email to admin@ this site, may work, cause he is busy, yet, may have an answer for ya.

    Comment by just a guy — September 6, 2009 @ 3:43 pm

63. 

    Awesome!!! thanks man. I did it in safe mode as that was very easy.

    Comment by Kevin — September 12, 2009 @ 2:31 am

64. 

    My USB disks still cannot be converted to dynamic. I replaced the 3 files in the 6 places under Safe Mode XP-Pro-SP3 as described above. I used the fc (file compare?) utility in a cmd window to check that the files were in fact replaced and were identical to the hacked versions and different from the original versions. But when I open computer management:disk management my USB Disk1 (titled LaCie2–a 500 GB external USB disk) has the “convert to dynamic disk” option grayed out. The internal system disk will allow “convert to dynamic disk” but not the external USB disk. What do I need to do to convert the external USB disk to dynamic? I plan on using raid5 for having rarely used old data online and maintaining stability if one of the 1 TB disks fails. The array would only be written once, then read occasionally. Thanks –Lance

    Comment by Lance Davidow — September 29, 2009 @ 2:24 pm

65. 

    Is there an upper TB limit in Win XP Pro for this? I plan to keep my 320GB C: drive “as is” and use it as the boot and OS drive. Then I want to add three internal SATA 2TB drives and RAID 5 those to get a 4TB volume. Is that possible?

    Comment by Skippy_R — October 12, 2009 @ 12:41 pm

66. 

    Question:
    I have now used ye ole software hack to run a RAID 5 for a year or so now with no problems with the RAID itself. P5B Delux MoBo etc …. My problem is that my C: drive is crapped out.
    Any hints on what I can do?
    (I’m still farking with the C to see if I can recover anything, right now its -1MB capacity)

    Comment by Thrudd — October 22, 2009 @ 10:37 pm

67. 

    @Skippy_R:

    There most definitely is a limit, and I hit the wall last night trying to create a 4TB RAID 5 array. The limit is 2TB, and it’s imposed by a combination of two factors:

    (1) The outdated MBR method of structuring disk partitions, which doesn’t handle anything past 2TB. In order to exceed you need to restructure disks with “GPT”, GUID partition table, which evolved alongside the EFI BIOS initiative. GPT supports insanely large volumes.

    (2)ANY 32-bit version of Windows, because no 32-bit version supports GPT disks. Even in the 64-bit versions support is limited to data-only volumes unless you happen to have a motherboard with an EFI BIOS (good luck finding one of those). Basically Microsoft has struck and screwed you again, by artificially limiting hardware support to force you to upgrade, just as they did with the 4GB RAM ceiling.

    So, in order to achieve volumes larger than 2TB you NEED to create GPT disks, and in order to then freely use those GPT disks… you basically need Linux or FreeBSD (or OSX).

    Comment by VulcanTourist — October 31, 2009 @ 1:56 pm

68. 

    I once had a c problem:
    during reinstall ( NOT A FRESH ONE, as far as i can remember ), it could not find a file and needed me to browse computer for it, I realized I was browsing computer, and copied all my need files. (luckily did not need password)

    was sooooo lucky. good luck.

    Comment by just a guy — November 3, 2009 @ 2:51 am

69. 

    Just one question, I have two HDD, can I do RAID 1 by soft with XP SP3? or I need at least 3 disks, I wanna be shure, that´s why I ask, I didn´t understood well that part.

    Thanks.

    Comment by mat — November 12, 2009 @ 2:39 am

70. 

    raid 1 only needs 2 disks. (it is mirror or striped)
    raid 5 needs 3 disks.
    you can not install windows on a soft raid.

    you will have windows on hdd1, normal partition, dynamic disk.
    you can make raid1 on hdd1, different partition, with a partition on hdd2.

    good luck.

    Comment by just a guy — November 16, 2009 @ 1:33 am

71. 

    Can I have 2 HDDs and a raid1? I want to take existing install of windows and have Mirror Raid without losing existing data or reinstalling.

    Comment by Dave — November 20, 2009 @ 11:25 am

72. 

    you can not make a dynamic disc partition smaller.
    if windows has it’s own partition, just make the disc dynamic, then raid another partition on same hdd with the other dynamic disc.

    if windows hdd is 1 partition, no, cannot be done.
    - 99.999% sure.

    if you can ghost the whole thing onto DVD, that’s an option. (only option?)

    Comment by just a guy — November 22, 2009 @ 1:58 am

73. 

    hmm, ghosting might require same size partition. check that out first.

    Comment by just a guy — November 22, 2009 @ 1:59 am

74. 

    Will this hack work under XP Pro x64 ? Have a backup computer w/ hardware raid on “c” (operating system), a hardware raid 5 “D” drive (6-750gb), and want to add a software based raid 5 “E” drive (8-500gb)(m/b DFI LP X48 T2R, 8gb mem. Tried several hardware based cards but the bios size limitations won’t allow them them to install.

    Thanks

    Comment by Duane Lyons — November 27, 2009 @ 8:26 am

75. 

    I am hoping I get a quick answer for this, but here is my question. Will this work on Windows XP Home? I do not have a copy of Pro.

    Comment by Slippery — November 30, 2009 @ 3:13 pm

76. 

    Slippery, I doubt it, he seems to state many times “XP pro”.
    Does Home have any options at all to do Raid?
    - you can always backup the mentioned files and try it, but I would not try it on a system with important information.

    Comment by just a guy — December 1, 2009 @ 2:57 am

77. 

    Duane, search this page for “kevin”, there are 4. read related articles, one is an answer from the admin, he does not say don’t use it on vista 64.
    - or give it a try, if you have a spare computer.

    Comment by just a guy — December 1, 2009 @ 3:03 am

78. 

    I have an existing system, XP pro, If I add an extra HDD using this option, will the existing OS be mirrored?

    Comment by john — December 1, 2009 @ 9:27 pm

79. 

    havn’t had this much fun try’n to make software work since my apple II days

    need help-

    ok, this is a clean install xp pro x64 sp2 on my “backup” computer w/ an old DFI LT P35 T2R m/b w 8gb ram & a Q6700. Boot drive is 2x76gb Raptors in raid 1 on the m/b’s 2 port jmb raid controller. Have a raid 5 on the intel 6 port raid controller w/ 6-750GB drives running great under the Intel matrix storage manager. Added a SIIG 8 port SATA II controller card w/ 8-500GB drives attached to it that i’m trying to set up in a raid 5 array w/ this hack (disks already set to dynamic) I tried several 8 port sata/raid cards and the bios wouldn’t let them load. Everything is up and running fine EXCEPT as follows: (I had to copy the files in individually because the bat file wouldn’t do it)

    copy dmboot.sys C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers copies ok
    copy dmboot.sys C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache message “the file could not be copied”
    copy dmconfig.dll C:\WINDOWS\system32 copies ok
    copy dmconfig.dll C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache “the file could not be copied”
    copy dmadmin.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32 copies ok
    copy dmadmin.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache message “access is denied”

    Went ahead and re-booted to see what would happen and it booted ok. Got into disk manager, and went to “import foreign disks”, and I get this: “the operation cannot complete, check the system error log”. Read the error logs, mostly “information” but that stuffs way above me. Since I couldn’t “import” them, never could get to the revised “new volumn wizard” In poking around, it appears it didn’t load.

    Anybody got any ideas on how to get those three(3) files to copy ? maybe it would work then.

    I am no expert by any means, but i’m pretty good at following directions.

    Thanks-

    Comment by Duane Lyons — December 4, 2009 @ 12:00 am

80. 

    duane, did you try in safe mode like i suggested further up?

    Comment by just a guy — December 4, 2009 @ 5:00 pm

81. 

    thanks for the “safe mode” trick. Missed that-

    Got ‘em copied into the correct directories and verified on the good reboot-

    But now when I go to “disk management”, won’t let me in at all. Message is “unable to Logical Disk Manager Service”.

    gotta be some unique difference between the x86 & x64 hex coding.

    open to any other ideas !!

    Comment by Duane — December 4, 2009 @ 7:05 pm

82. 

    yup, but i don’t remember exact details.
    has to do with putting those new files in more places than needed.
    so try putting all the new files, in each folder you are supposed to put even one, of the new files.
    i did that first time round.

    reason: – because your message has to do with not being able to find the manager service, so stick ‘em everywhere.

    also: the reason i may have done that first time round is because i do alot of that type of thing to computer.
    - so i didn’t just go to new places, i searched for ‘to be replaced’ file names in the whole c: partition.

    i may have made copy of what i did, i like notes. i’ll post if i find em.

    Comment by just a guy — December 4, 2009 @ 11:02 pm

83. 

    ran a *dm* search on the boot drive on this computer which has an unaltered x64 sp2 os.

    dmboot.sys only occurs in c:\windows\system32\drivers

    dmconfig.dll occurs in: c:\windows\system32
    c:\windows\system32\dllcache

    dmadmin.exe only occurs in: c:\windows\system32

    went back to the “backup computer” & loaded the 3 files into the 3 affected directories and got same error. (9 entries)

    then tried just replacing the affected files per the above. same error. (4 entries)

    if you’ve got a few minutes, look at this.

    run regedit and go to: hkey_current_user/software/microsoft/search assistant/acmru/5064

    in it are references to dm*, dmconfig*, & dmboot*.

    is it possible that some of this binary data needs to be changed to point to the right place ? I’m not smart enough to know what it’s supposed to do. I just found it and thought it might have some effect on this.

    Thanks again-

    Comment by Duane — December 5, 2009 @ 12:37 am

84. 

    if you search the net, there is another site i found about this, and it does talk about changing things, and i think, even how to do it.
    - not sure if it is also for 64, but worth a search.

    Comment by just a guy — December 6, 2009 @ 3:00 am

85. 

    Just an FYI, even if the windows drive is not C: when you are in windows, the drive is C: when you are in the windows restore. The batch file will work regardless of which drive windows is installed on.

    FYI, XP Pro is better then FreeNAS for a raid. FreeNAS messed up my drives pretty good and took me the whole weekend to get them bootable again. Almost RMA’ed them but was able to get it working. Only lost 60gb of dvd movies that I converted over in the process of setting up FreeNAS.

    Comment by Derek — December 6, 2009 @ 1:01 pm

86. 

    Found this and it works great using the 2 files & diskpart. Created a raid 5 w/ 8-500gb sata II’s. Backup computer now has a raid 1 & 2-raid 5 arrays. 16 total disks. what a paper weight !!

    http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245325-32-setting-raid-windows

    used this for diskpart commands:

    http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Configuring_and_Managing_RAID_5_on_Windows_Server_2008

    Comment by Duane — December 6, 2009 @ 6:13 pm

87. 

    I’ve set the RAID 5 up successfully. However, the speed is quite slow, I’m only getting about 5MB/sec of transfer, which is way slower than each HDD would be, and I’ve checked to make sure that the CPU isn’t busy in any way.

    My configuration is:
    Windows XP Pro SP3
    P4 3.0GHz
    2GB DDR2 566MHz
    4 x 1TB WD Caviar Green

    A note is that one of the Green has a different cache size of 8MB instead of 32MB.

    Comment by alanngli — December 24, 2009 @ 10:48 am

88. 

    Merry Christmas all

    Comment by just a guy — December 25, 2009 @ 1:47 am

89. 

    Thanks Derek.

    Glad to hear Duane. Rockin’ 2010 for ya!

    Alanngli, I have no experience with Raid 5 yet,
    I would try this:
    - check all cables and pins, especially power connector sleeves
    – they get loose with warming and cooling
    — maybe try each HDD on its own, and swap cables
    —- there are HDD tests programs out there, maybe one HAS gone bad
    - make sure power supply is up to par
    - check HDD temperatures with a 3rd party program
    - do a check disk on all drives
    - reformat the drives, if that is not a pain
    – the ultimate would be a zero’ing of all bits, with manufacturers software,
    – maybe 1 by 1 to save your info.
    – on this page I talk about how I saved my harddrive that has a bad ?bit?, incase you run into that problem. (there is also a link to a pic that shows my 3 HDD setup.)
    — that HDD runs fine, an older IDE at that.

    other than that, post your findings and it may jog my memory on something.
    good luck and hang in there!

    …just tryin to help.

    Comment by just a guy — December 29, 2009 @ 11:26 pm

90. 

    Derek, I think I know what you went through; XP did something like that to me.
    I installed xp with my back-up cd of dl’ed programs connected.
    - what i found out / realized too late, is that my info was still there, but the fat was corrupted / ‘pawned’ by xp, so nothing knew where to find the start of each file.
    - there are ways to rebuild it, but it requires a crisp mind to back up that info.
    – infact, it may be just the partition locations that were lost.
    still, it is not a 2 minute thing to learn or do, from what i remember; but if you’re so inclined… or Raid em! hehe.

    Comment by just a guy — December 29, 2009 @ 11:38 pm

91. 

    Alinngli,
    if it turns out to be that 8meg of ram slowing it down, i saw something called HDD ram, or something to that effect.
    the only 2 i saw were for notebooks. pci-e x1 i think.
    - the 1 gig solid state ram was 40$ canadian, in a store.

    just a thought. (i’m still looking for more info cause i’d like more speed too.

    Comment by just a guy — December 29, 2009 @ 11:49 pm

92. 

    not to advertise, but here is the memory i was talking about.
    http://www.microbytes.com/computer/ordinateur/product_info.php?products_id=21501

    Comment by just a guy — December 30, 2009 @ 12:08 am

93. 

    Thanks just a guy.

    I had a feeling it might have something to do with the PSU, as it is a standard Dell unit, 350W probably. I didn’t try to upgrade it thinking that the Green doesn’t use much electricity, but I might be wrong.

    Also, I used a quick format instead of proper format during initialization, so this could be the reason as well. Without knowing how RAID would configure NTFS, if I can take out the HDD one at a time and format them on another computer, and allow the system to regenerate afterwards, would this be the same as me taking all data out and format the entire RAID5 as one?

    The SMART status of all of them checked out, and they are all quite cool even when stacked together (35 to 42 degrees Celsius).

    Just to make sure, so people here has minimal suspicion of the 8MB cache of 1 HDD causing the trouble?

    Comment by alanngli — December 30, 2009 @ 5:51 am

94. 

    As far as I can tell, this is one persons site.
    - I just love the fact that I have Striped Raid now, plus I like helping others, so I’m answering questions.
    - Don’t get me wrong, I have been learning computers on my own for over 10 years, with much input from very knowledgeable people.

    Dell PSU: I have an optiplex 280, and should not be able to run the video card: HD4850, pci-e x16… but I am.
    - I think they are under rated, but I am still within 5-10% of max.

    One at a time is fine. I mention the zero-ing out step, because I had another hard with a bad ?bit? once, and it was gone after the zero’ing.
    - that drive is still running in someones computer.

    I don’t trust SMART anymore, because check disk found a problem on the IDE drive I’m using now, but SMART never gave me a warning.

    8 MB being a problem? Hmmm
    frome here: http://opensystemsguy.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/john-hardware-vs-software-raid-raid-5-or-10/
    - it sounds like Raid 5 is slower, and not as trust worthy as raid 1. Bigger(raid5) in this case, is not always better (raid1).

    - and ty, i won’t confuse raid 0 or 1 anymore.
    – Raid = redundancy: Raid 0 means, none; no redundancy… striping is has no redundancy/backup, so it is zero(0).(not really raid at all).

    that link also speaks of people with Raid 5 having backup Raid 5′s :O, now that shounds like a waste.
    - I can say I don’t find my Raid 1′s (mirrors) to be slow.

    Raid 5 must truly be the inexpensive way to have a large Raid, but not the fastest or the most reliable.
    - again, 5 is a bigger number, but in no way means bigger in respectablility.

    I suggest researching Raid types with this in mind: “What do I want to do with my Raid?”.

    Comment by just a guy — December 30, 2009 @ 11:10 pm

95. 

    yup, from what I’ve read, Raid is for back-ups.(maybe to have better performance than tape backup, and is usually hot-swappable, for when a drive goes bad; good for server applications.)
    as for running windows & programs off of a Raid 5, i’d say nope.

    Comment by just a guy — December 31, 2009 @ 9:13 am

96. 

    Hope you don’t mind, an FYI for Dell Optiplex 280 owners.
    I have the small mini tower (smt) and did not find anyone that had tried the DDR2-533 ram.
    Here is what I got with the kingston 2x1gig I got straight from Dell:

    Alone: 4-4-4-12 as per JEDEC#2, with CPU-Z; 266MHz; FSB:DRAM – 3:4; dual channel; P4 remains at 200MHz with 800FSB.

    With original 2x512meg 400 ram: 3-3-3-9, caused by new sticks, original sticks alone were 3-3-3-8, with CPU-Z; 200MHz; FSB:DRAM – 1:1; dual channel; P4 ofcourse at 200MHz with 800FSB.

    Conclusion: seems that the ram can/does run faster, with its own bus speed, just like the pci bus can at 33/66(whichever). The 266MHz tells me that the DDR2 memory is really running at 533, faster than the 200MHz at 400.
    - I don’t find anything slower, and with the option I chose, if some things do run faster with the 3339@200MHz, I can always add back the original sticks.

    Comment by just a guy — January 5, 2010 @ 5:13 pm

97. 

    More HDD info.
    Make sure you are formatted at the default 4kB cluster size.(go to defrag and do an analyze, then view the report; cluster size is written there. windows upgrades, ex win98 to xp, are said to put it at minimum of 512b, yes, that equals 1/2 of a kB. And I’ve read that lower than the default 4kB has a speed impact on the negative side of things.)
    I’m now trying the 64k, 32k, 16k,(maybe 8k) sizes, and have read that not one single person that has tested 64k has had any speed improvement (something to do with memory page size being a limiting factor) except maybe while defragging.(and defrag is supposedly the smallest speed increase one can do, when it comes to ntfs-formatted harddrives.)
    

    Comment by just a guy — January 11, 2010 @ 2:46 pm

98. 

    Quick formats: I had a problem long ago with those and never went back. I always let it do a full/proper(whatever) format, as that IS where my info is kept, and I only have to do it once. (except when I get the ‘play’ bug, and make different partitions to different cluster sizes. )

    OHHHH, I did read that partitioning disks is another speed bump. Suggestions I’ve read are like: If you want something saved on a D: drive, make a folder called ‘D drive’,,, ntfs is faster/better with large voluems.(what that size limit is, is another page in the book )

    Comment by just a guy — January 11, 2010 @ 2:52 pm

99. 

    Forgot to write:
    Going from 4kB clusters to 64kB clusters, on the partition where I keep all my downloaded programs and info,
    I went from 80megs of wasted space to 1.6gigs of wasted space, and that is on approx. 50gigs of info, so a 3% waste-of-space; which is 20 times or, 2000% INCREASE in wasted HDD space. yuck!

    Comment by just a guy — January 11, 2010 @ 3:03 pm

100. 

     well,
     I didn’t find any great speed improvement, so I scrapped 64KB, 32KB…; but,
     I did put my program files onto Raid 1, as the read speed is same as Raid 0(not bad, anyways) and I don’t mind ‘standard’ write speed; plus the added redundancy let me ditch some backup files, like stellarium’s 5 star catalogues.
     - also, I wanted back at Raid 0 for my pagefile, and didn’t like the NTFS ‘imoveability’(locked files) which fragmented the pagefile, right off the bat; and I remembered FAT32; I formatted my Raid 0 from windows explorer to FAT32, put the 1 piece (yay) pagefile there(beeeeginning of drive, yay) and then used xp’s convert.exe from the cmd.exe; NTFS had no choice but to put its files at the end. hehe
     – I’m stuck with pagefile on 4KB clusters, as there was no option in the convert process, but the rest of my system, except windows’ partition, is 8KB. It might not be faster(as some reading pointed clearly to larger clusters being needed to address the larger harddrive problem) but altleast if less programs can read 8KB, the harder hackers will have to work.

     Comment by just a guy — January 12, 2010 @ 8:01 pm

101. 

     Quote:
     71.
     Can I have 2 HDDs and a raid1? I want to take existing install of windows and have Mirror Raid without losing existing data or reinstalling.

     Comment by Dave — November 20, 2009 @ 11:25 am

     Reply:(reversing my statement)
     Sorry I was led astray by much of what I read on the internet.
     - I am right now typing this from a SOFTWARE RAID1, mirrored, WinXPpro.
     Originally it was installed on partition 1 of a harddrive and
     with an unallocated 2nd HDD, all I had to do was right click it in:
     ‘Disk Management’ and choose ‘add mirror’.

     That plain and simple.

     What I’m trying next is: well, I first tried mirror’ing to a partition 2 on another HDD, it said it copied volume info, but would not be bootable unless I edited the boot.ini.
     I don’t know enough to know where the mirrored boot.ini was put, 20$ says on partition 2, or know enough to know if the bios will find it there… I’ll know within 5 hrs., and be posting again if all goes well.

     if you read this and want at it, just know you can edit your boot.ini through the edit button.(just right click my computer / properties, and go through all the statup stuff)not much there, really.

     …wish me luck…

     Comment by just a guy — January 14, 2010 @ 8:53 pm

102. 

     Ohhh, and while it’s mirror’ing your WinXP, just sit and watch; because I tried to start PC Wizard 2010 and crashed the whole lot.
     lol
     (nothing was lost, but I did have to let it sit and do its thing for a 1/2 hour or so.)

     Comment by just a guy — January 14, 2010 @ 8:57 pm

103. 

     ugh! alot of work to get a bootable key working.
     I’m sure that’ll do it, more tomorrow; as well as a mirror to partition 1, test.

     Comment by just a guy — January 15, 2010 @ 1:00 am

104. 

     Ok, forget the boot key, that’s for another day.

     I did do the partition 1 winXP mirror, here’s how it went:
     - got a new drive
     - put a 48meg partition on it and set it to active
     – (can not make dynamic disks ‘active’, and even what I did is said to be pointless, either way, that’s what I did.)
     - converted it to dynamic (there were a bunch of warnings along the whole process, I just went the ‘whatever’ route with those I don’t mention.)
     - deleted 48meg volume
     - started mirror process, and got some warning about arpsect. or something arp’ish
     - stopped mirror process, rebooted computer, retried mirroring,,, no messages, good.
     - after mirror’ing, rebooted to BIOS to test this, and disabled original HDD
     – (not the same as taking it out, as I think it loaded windows from that HDD anyways, but that (and a long list of other things I did) did prove that the new HDD was bootable, even if it did, as I say, boot the default after the time delay.[remember the options at boot? boot this one or that one?]
     – the ‘that one’ looks like: Boot Mirror C: – secondary plex)
     - that went well
     - rebooted to BIOS, enabled original HDD again and WOW !!!
     - I got a no-go situation
     – I tried many different enable-disabled HDDs and, boot from default-secondaryplex combinations.
     – the one that worked was, everything enabled, and boot to secondary plex.
     – then the original HDD winXPpro had to be resynch’ed
     - (why? …I had only let my test of the new HDD make it to the logon screen, where I rebooted to the BIOS. Even that short distance into the boot process was enough to make the 2 HDDs out of synch. BUT probably only the xp install volume,,, I didn’t have another mirror’ed volume between the 2 HDDs to let you know for sure.)

     Notes:
     if you ‘test’ it, be ready to sit and watch it resynch. AND be patient when trying options to get it to boot normally again !!!!!!!!!! really !!!!!! patient !!!!!
     - cause one of my combinations did get windows up and running, but all my volumes with, all of my backups, and even the volume where i was installing programs too, was gone!!! it scared me and made my heart sink. BUT with patience! I did make it through.(not said to scare you, but as a heads-up)

     conclusion:
     it works.
     (and I AM sticking with this setup. Don’t have to do the copy/paste/synching of my backups myself… which was my Original hope in all of this.)
     - plus I have XP in the same backup type situation. Cool!!!
     (setup: 2 HDDs completely mirrored except the pagefile is striped,
     60gig winXP, then
     2148MB Pagefile, then
     35gig 2ndProgramFiles because I don’t want to reinstall everything, then
     160gig backup.) (and I’ve gone back to 4MB clusters.)
     – if i ever redo the lot, I’ll have pagefile first, and all program files on C drive of 160gig, but will keep the 160gig 2nd volume for backups, I run my game from there which is up to 20 gigs of maps now…
     – as for the pagefile: put it on an empty fat32 volume, then convert the volume to NTFS if that is what you use. The short process follows, the ‘x:’ will be ‘h:’ if h is the volume where the pagefile will be:
     start/run/cmd,
     convert x: /FS:NTFS /V

     The above has been a recount of what I’ve done. It may or may not go the same way for you. Good luck and have fun

     Comment by just a guy — January 15, 2010 @ 4:28 pm

105. 

     Clarity for the previous post:
     1) The line:
     – the one that worked was, everything enabled, and boot to secondary plex.
     means that all my volumes were again ‘seen’ by windows and no information or time was lost; nothing extra had to be done.
     2) The line:
     2148MB Pagefile, then
     means that I had 2×2148=4296 MB. Windows’ manager shows how much space is used on each HDD.
     3) didn’t mean to repeat some of the pagefile stuff, regarding post 100.(don’t see numbers? use IE’s compatability button )

     Comment by just a guy — January 15, 2010 @ 4:37 pm

106. 

     Oh man, forget the multiple volumes and complete mirrored stuff,,, if it ever has to resynch, the heads with will be thrashing back and forth trying to resynch all mirrors at once(from past experience) and every time windows doesn’t shut down properly……. man, bad idea.

     - ok, I’m going to keep mulitple volumes and do periodic mirroring between 2 other drives and break those mirrors right after, yeah, better idea.(possible loss of some data, but it’s all the little bits that I have right now which are the most important, and hardest to re-google, right? )
     – and even though you can’t choose which volume keeps the drive letter when you break the mirror, I’m hoping it’s the original and not the mirror, makes sense, I can always safe mode in, and do some changes to drive letters, quickly enough.

     Comment by just a guy — January 15, 2010 @ 4:59 pm

107. 

     OMG !!! wtf!
     Ok, DON’T test the OS mirror by breaking it!!!
     it chose the new HDD to keep the default ‘c:’ title, probably because the original had to be resynch’ed.
     I wanted the ‘c:’ on the other drive, stupid me, and could only think of freeing the ‘c:’ so I changed it to ‘g:’,,, yes, a bunch of warnings, but no
     ‘NO, DON’T DO IT!’.
     Upon reboot, I did the ctrl+alt+del and put in my password and it went to a ‘logging off…’ screen, and I had to do it over and over and over.
     - i tried it all, couldn’t get back in.

     One option I went most of the way through was the 2nd repair option from the CD, ya know when you decide to reinstall xp and it says it found one, do you want to repair.
     - it was going fine, but slow, and i could only imagine it being always that slow, so, even though I did get to the desktop,,, while it was still doing the fixes, I decide to reinstall fresh.
     - that went well, had to delete the xp it could see and then reinstalled,,, and it put the disk back to BASIC! and the rest was unreadable,,, shown as unallocated.
     - nothing got it to ‘see’ that part of the drive again.
     - ALSO, READING THE DISK MANAGEMENT WINDOW CAN BE CONFUSING
     - MAKE SURE YOU ARE SCROLLED TO THE TOP OF THE GRAPHIC SECTION.
     - cause I didn’t, and messed both HDDs.

     I am presently using GetBackData for NTFS, the expert one, and it is almost finished the first phase, hoping it will find file names and directory struture as well.

     I had even copied my key’s info to HDDs to try and make a boot key.
     - it’s all gone man, all gone,,, unless this recovery works.(15 years of info.)
     - plus, i have 2 identical disks to get the info from, so i get to mess up once real good.

     Comment by just a guy — January 16, 2010 @ 7:07 pm

108. 

     um, jon, please fix that post to be by: just a guy.
     ty in advance.

     Comment by just a guy — January 16, 2010 @ 7:09 pm

109. 

     and that one too lol

     Comment by just a guy — January 16, 2010 @ 7:09 pm

110. 

     getdataback worked great.
     - although, i had the ideal situation for data recovery.

     for the pagefile ‘convert’ i did from cmd window, it looks like this:

     D:\Computer programs>convert i: /FS:NTFS /V
     The type of the file system is FAT32.
     Enter current volume label for drive I: pagef
     Convert cannot run because the volume is in use by another
     process. Convert may run if this volume is dismounted first.
     ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID.
     Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (Y/N) y
     Convert failed to dismount the volume.
     Convert cannot gain exclusive access to the I: drive,
     so it cannot convert it now. Would you like to
     schedule it to be converted the next time the
     system restarts (Y/N)? y
     The conversion will take place automatically the next time the
     system restarts.

     Remember, I have pagefiles in their own partitions.
     (seriously, I think 2 swaps on 2 HDDs is going way faster than striping 1 across those 2 HDDs.)

     either way, back up and running and everything re-installed. phew!

     Comment by just a guy — January 26, 2010 @ 6:46 pm

111. 

     I have tried the down load programs and have followed all instructions several times.
     The dmconfig.dll was fine but the dmboot.sys, the dmadmin.exe was not copyed in or they were changed back to the orignals. When I change from basic to dynamic only simple is shown the rest are grayed out.

     I would appreciate any comments or suggestions!

     Comment by KJM — February 16, 2010 @ 1:40 am

112. 

     and you have win xp pro? (english version too I guess.)

     Comment by just a guy — February 22, 2010 @ 9:10 pm

113. 

     note:
     when I installed them through safe mode, I had the computer up to date and had not yet set up any Raid types.
     also:
     I did my usual of: any folder where one of the files needed placing, I placed copies of all 3.(if i remember correctly, one of the extra copies i did like that, did overwrite another instance of itself.)
     and:
     any problems I had that you read on this page, was purely due to my ‘messing about’ to try and learn the limits, pro’s, and cons of working with dynamic disks and Raid.

     Comment by just a guy — February 23, 2010 @ 4:34 pm

114. 

     I’m still trying to get this working with XP64 SP2.
     I’m trying to create a RAID5 array of 5x 1.5TB disks for a total volume size of 6TB

     I’ve had them spanned and striped before, so not having any trouble with a 6 or 7.5TB volume, and XP64 supports GPT so my problems are not based on the large disk sizes.

     I just can’t seem to convince disk manager or diskpart to play ball. Despite hex editing the files myself to swap the SERVNT / WINNT flags, it seems to have made no difference.

     I don’t get a RAID-5 option in the DM gui, nor will diskpart allow me to run the command along the lines of;
     create volume raid disk=2,3,4,5,6

     which fails with the error;
     DiskPart was unable to create the specified volume.
     Please check your disks and parameters.

     Does anyone have any success stories of using this on XP64 with largish volume sizes?

     Perhaps I should just use a temporary install of WSS 2003 x64 to create the voume and then hope that XP64 will mount it…

     Comment by Phil — March 19, 2010 @ 7:31 pm

115. 

     I don’t have a succes story but:

     first a couple of the obvious questions:
     1) do you have atleast 3 drives with unallocated space on them of atleast 1gig.
     2) are all the drives seen as ‘internal’.

     have you tried with a smaller volume size(s)?
     are other raid types possible?(that were not possible before)

     xp should be able to ‘see’ and use raid volumes according to all the MS documents I’ve read on it.

     Comment by just a guy — March 20, 2010 @ 2:52 pm

116. 

     What if I divided my original hard drive into 2 partitions. Will the new hard drive in the array be mirrored the same with 2 partitions (I intend to apply RAID 1). Thanks for you time.

     Comment by Nguyen Bao Toan — May 16, 2010 @ 4:04 am

117. 

     Can I build a RAID 1 from disk 0 and disk 1 (disk 0 contain the existing OS)?

     Comment by Nguyen Bao Toan — May 16, 2010 @ 12:03 pm

118. 

     So I have had this for about… a year now. I am worried that my main drive with my windows installation (and therefore software RAID settings) might fail.

     How do I recover my 4 drive RAID 5 if I have to reinstall windows or move the drives to another windows xp machine?

     Comment by Felipe — June 8, 2010 @ 11:59 pm

119. 

     Question – could I somehow create a 3-drive raid 5 array in a degraded state (with 2 drives), copy files to it, then add the 3rd drive to reach parity?

     I have 3 drives, one of which has data on it, and no way to backup the data before making the array. Thanks!

     Comment by chris — July 10, 2010 @ 1:59 am

120. 

     I don’t think this is possible with RAID in Windows.

     Comment by admin — July 14, 2010 @ 12:44 am

121. 

     I used to teach people how to set up and optimise big Symmetrix arrays on Sequent boxes.
     I’m retired and setting up a file server at home, and needed a reality check on the micromanagement I was about to delve into.
     You have presented a perfectly wonderful walk through. The correct amount of information with the correct depth.
     Thanks for doing such a bang-up job.
     edw

     Comment by ofrmgfo — July 29, 2010 @ 7:19 pm

122. 

     Hello,
     Thx for the tutorial and such good informations here.I’ll have some questions about the raid5.
     1-) I have 3x 320GB hard drives, and passed the steps for reaching the raid5 option, but on the disk management section, it seems 1 basic disk(which OS here) and 2 unallocated disk sections.I wonder if i can add my original hard disk to raid5? and how can i do this?
     2-) I have thought about a solution, but it may be wrong. Firstly I’ll seperate my original hard disk into 2 partitions, one of them which requires the min. amount of hard disk capacity for windows xp and apply raid5 to rest of the capacity. After that I will setup a new windows on this partition and format the other.Is that a possible option?
     Thx to all again.

     Comment by Dincer — August 27, 2010 @ 10:47 am

123. 

     I guess there is no such an option to setup a windows onto a raid5 array.Then I tried this:
     - I divided my original hard disk into 2 partitions. 10GB for windows (this also wasted 10GB for each hard disk) and rest for the raid5 array.(3x320GB hard disks, all dynamic)
     - I applied raid5 to the unallocated spaces and it works fine.

     Now, I wonder if I face with an original hard drive (which includes OS) failure, will Windows XP continue working fine?
     btw ,as I mentioned before, I need a system has raid5 on a simple ‘C’ drive; all windows, data, etc. here in it.

     Open to any suggestions.

     Comment by Dincer — September 1, 2010 @ 5:17 am

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