A 5big Office/Office+ with two drives offers many options for the user, including the RAID configuration. While it is possible to create Spanned disks or a RAID 0 array, LaCie highly recommends mirroring for optimal protection of your data. RAID 0 can offer some speed advantages but data will not be duplicated across both volumes as with mirroring. Users risk losing data if one of the disks should fail in a RAID 0 array.
Volume | Disks and RAID Level | Usage | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Windows | 2 Disks Mirror | Windows must run from its own volume. Storing data on the system volume will impact server performance. Page file* | A Mirror requires two drives, making it ideal for the Windows operating system. A Mirror offers redundancy, duplicating each file on the two disks that make up the volume. If one disk should fail, the system data will be available on its mirrored drive. If Disk 0 should fail, it will be possible to recover the system boot disk before restarting the server. |
Data | 2 Disks Mirror | The Data volume should be used to create Shares and store data. | A Mirror offers redundancy, duplicating each file on the two disks that make up the volume. If one disk should fail, the data may be accessed from the mirrored drive without losing time. |
*The page file can be stored on the Windows volume.
Administrators may change RAID configurations to suit the needs of a business or after a server system recovery.
Use Disk Management to view or change RAID configurations in Windows:
The first time Disk Management is launched, you may be prompted to initialize your drives using MBR or GPT. For information on MBR and GPT formats, please read MBR, GPT and the 5big Office/Office+ Operating Systems. You can initialize the disks at this step or later in the process.
A single disk 5big Office/Office+ is shipped with three partitions, System, Windows, and Data. (The System partition takes up 100MB). The screenshot below shows both partitions on a single hard drive, Disk 0. Volume C contains the Windows operating system and volume D is meant to store data. As shipped, volume C takes up 60 GB.
If you have not inserted disks into the 5big enclosure, please see Removing and Installing Disks for instructions.
All Windows system files are duplicated on each disk in the mirror. To protect your system files and to save important data collected by the operating system, LaCie recommends a RAID 1 configuration for the system and Windows volumes. In case of disk failure, all files will be accessible on the disk paired for the mirror.
Though the bootloader file will be duplicated on both disks, Windows will only boot from Disk 0. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you do not restart the server if Disk 0 experiences problems. Instead, replace Disk 0 (Disk Tray Slot 1) as soon as possible and rebuild the RAID 1 onto the new drive.