A freeby or no

[dusty]

I was just given a computer that has four hard drives in it. I think the donor called it a Raid 5 with stripping and parity. What am I up against to put this puppy in service. It boots but seems to have trouble with Windows XP.

It also has four video drivers. Are the video drivers somehow related to the hard drives?

[roy_okc]

Dusty,

Did you also receive a Windows install CD? What are you wanting to do with the computer; what programs do you need/want to run?

I'm guessing that your RAID may be what is called "fake raid" using a cheap chip on the motherboard and the CPU. It could be real RAID, with a separate RAID processor. The fake RAID is OK until the hardware breaks, then good luck retrieving your data; real RAID can also have problems, especially $$$ to buy a compatible replacement board. If I were using this with Windows, I would break the RAID 5 and reconfigure with a couple RAID 1 sets. RAID 1 is having two drives exactly the same, if one drive dies, the other can continue along; also not typically so hardware dependent.

When you say video drivers, do you mean in software or actual physical video ports? The video is not related to the hard drives.

Roy

I was just given a computer that has four hard drives in it. I think the donor called it a Raid 5 with stripping and parity. What am I up against to put this puppy in service. It boots but seems to have trouble with Windows XP.

It also has four video drivers. Are the video drivers somehow related to the hard drives?

[farley]

Dusty
what do you want it to do?

Do you want to do it?

I can rebuild it for you and install Windows XP and Office etc.

What brand is it, (drivers are not always easy to get for some.)

Let me know, didn't cost you anything, I won't cost you anything, so you have nothing to lose.

Also I have a good Dell monitor (not flat screen) I can give you if you need it.

[paulmcohen]

I was just given a computer that has four hard drives in it. I think the donor called it a Raid 5 with stripping and parity. What am I up against to put this puppy in service. It boots but seems to have trouble with Windows XP.

It also has four video drivers. Are the video drivers somehow related to the hard drives?

Assuming you have a copy of Windows to install on it it should just work Raid 5 is about performance and reliability but should be transparent to the OS assuming you have the drivers for it, while Windows XP may not Windows Vista and 7 will. The 4 video cards let you connect 4 monitors to the computer and make it look like one gigantic screen with the ability to move the mouse or any application over or between the screens. When new this was an extremely expensive computer costing $1,000's. The only trouble you might have (if you don't have 4 monitors is figuring out which one to connect your monitor to).

[Ed in Tampa]

Dusty
The more I mess with PC's the more I learn that it often takes an alchemist to make them work right. Since I was in IBM I have been working with them since the 80's when they first came out. But there is so many factors that are dependant on others that unless your doing this everyday you miss things.

Do a search on google for Raid 5 and will find out you quickly get it sucked in the world of unknown. Unless you are bent on learning about stripping off parity and using an formulas for insuring data security I would format the hard drives install XP and see with happens.

RAID, an acronym for redundant array of independent disks or redundant array of inexpensive disks, is a technology that provides increased storage reliability through redundancy, combining multiple low-cost, less-reliable disk drive components into a logical unit where all drives in the array are interdependent. Defintion from Wikipedia.

Raid 5 gets even more exciting.

[paulrussell]

You don't need to use the Raid functions. There is a bios setting somewhere to enable/disable it, and with it off you will simply have four hard drives. Simpler, and for most folks, a better solution.

I've run RAID systems and non-RAID. Unless you need the speed or immediate redundancy, I would say pass. Today's drives are fast enough without the complexity of RAID, and a nightly or weekly backup is good enough for us mortals.