25

Being familiar with the software raid modes and dynamic disks from the server versions, I was wondering if there is a document or even just common crowd knowledge that indicated what software raid support was available for each version of Windows 7.

Also - all the various raid levels supported for booting or just a data recovery mechanism (e.g. you can connect three RAID-5 dynamic disks to an already booted system).

I would prefer to stay away from modified/copied DLL's from the server variants, as well - please note - this is Windows software RAID - not fake-raid from your BIOS or an add-on card.

Tamara Wijsman
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Goyuix
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5 Answers5

22

The Professional/Enterprise/Ultimate editions of Windows 7 officially support the following dynamic disk modes:

  • Simple
  • Spanned
  • Striped (RAID-0)
  • Mirrored (RAID-1)

These are the officially supported modes. It has been possible in previous Windows releases to enable unsupported modes through DLL modifications and/or registry changes, and this will probably be the case in Windows 7 as well. At your own risk, of course.

RAID-5 dynamic disks are only available in Windows Server editions.

Note that dynamic disks are not available in the Standard/Home editions of Windows 7.

arathorn
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0

It's a bit late now, but here's a screenshot in Windows 7 Ultimate:

Windows 7 disk management

Gareth
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travis
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-1

Umm, RAID offered by the bios isn't the best but is far better than raid provided by the operating system. RAID provided by a proper controller such as one that has an abundant amount of cache which can be configured (if protected by an onboard battery) exclusively for write cache are the better option and should not be regarded as "fake". This is why expensive controllers which offload resources from the operating system to calculate parity can provide the best performance and redundancy including the classic mirror (RAID 1) for the o\s with a dedicated or global hot spare and either a raid5\6\10 or 50 depending on the type of data you have. Generally you will separate different i\o patterns to separate logical volumes for performance i.e. sequential read and or write generally will go to a raid 1 as would be the case for transaction logs in say an SQL server and random i\o patterns should be kept - not only for disaster recovery, but for performance on a separate logical volume of say based on your disk size as this affects the rebuild rate, to either a raid5\6\10 or 50.

Hardware raid is always the best option, that is why controllers can cost several thousand to tens of thousands of dollars depending mainly on the amount of onboard cache and options such as migration from say raid 1 to raid 5 or 6... it really doesn't compare to "fake" software raid.

nick
  • 9
-2

http://www.alanjlee.com/interesting-bits/a-few-notes-on-windows-7-software-raid/

  • RAID0 (striped) - confirmed under Windows 7 build 7100
  • RAID1 (mirror) - confirmed under Windows 7 build 7100
  • RAID5 - not confirmed - the option is visible but greyed out, even with 5x disks in Windows 7 build 7100
Michael Bisbjerg
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TheTXI
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-3

The software raid option has been a part of windows since NT 4.0. You can do RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5.

Also remember that Windows now supports linking in directories like unix now.

RAID O requires at least two disks. RAID 1 requires at least two disks. RAID 5 requires at least three disks to work.

Axxmasterr
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