TomHF

I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with XP Media Center OS and I have some questions about a RAID 1 array that I have set up.

I have recently recovered from a disastrous HD failure that forced me to reinstall my complete XP Media Center OS and all of the accumulated programs that have been installed since 2005. Luckily, I had backed up things like Quicken files, Word docs, photos and my large collection of MP3s, but all else was lost.

After getting my system back to where it was pre-failure, I decided to set up a RAID 1 array. I decided on this because, as I understand it, this will maintain a mirror of whatever is on my main drive on a second drive that can be used in case of HD failure.

I did the following:
1 - I updated the Bios to the latest (version A09)
2 - I reset the Bios for Raid array on SATA disks 0 and 1
3 - I then set up the array using the "Intel Application Accelerator" program. It took about 2 hours for the operation to complete and it seemed to do what it was supposed to do.

All seemed to go well but here are my questions:
1 - Is it normal for the second drive in an array to not appear in the Windows Explorer tree?
2- Is there any way for me to see if the computer is recognizing the drive and it is actually doing what it is supposed to be doing?
3 - Is there any way to see if the data on the second drive is actually viable and will work in case of a failure?

I hope that you guys don't think that I am paranoid, but I don't want to go thru another recovery of a lost main drive.

Thanks again for any advice or info. Tom F

wiseleo

It's a hardware RAID. Windows thinks it's 1 disk.
Your RAID utilities will tell you if it's working.
You can always remove one of the drives and see if the system boots. It should. Usually RAID tools complain very loudly when things break.