XP Drive mirroring

[Nestorath69]

I just found out that Windows XP can save your information on two hard disks simultaneously. Yes, it slows down your computer, but What I want to know is how to set it up- I don't know how.

[no1_vern]

IF you have xp Professional its easy:

Once you’ve installed the additional hard drive(s), open Windows XP’s Control Panel, select Administrative Tools, Computer Management, and then click on Disk Management to bring up a visual representation of your current disk drives. Any drives that are to become part of a RAID array must be converted from Basic Disks into Dynamic Disks. This is done by right-clicking the drive and selecting Convert to Dynamic.

Creating a Mirror (RAID 1) is simple. After converting the drives to a Dynamic, right-click on the dynamic drive that will be the main drive and then select Add Mirror. You’ll be asked which drive to add as the Mirror. Select the target drive from the available list and the mirror will be created. Note that you’ll need to have a second available dynamic disk in order for RAID 1 to be available.

The drives will now show up sharing the same drive letter. Just like with Striping, it’s necessary to select the smaller drive as the first drive. The second or “mirror” drive will be limited to the size of the first drive, to assure compatibility.

[Nestorath69]

Can it be done on a OS hard drive so that you have redundancy for your OS? I personally don't think it can.

[no1_vern]

No, It cant. The OS has to load before it will see the mirrored drives.

[M_Six]

You cannot create mirrored sets in XP. Not without an addon RAID card. There's a whole set of instructions about how to do it in XP's Help files, and then you get to this part:

"You can create mirrored volumes only on computers running Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. "

Pretty sad joke that they let you get all that way only to pull the rug out from under you at the last minute. If anyone finds a way to mirror disks in XP, please let me know how. But according to M$, it can't be done.