Reliability
To test the usability and reliability of the RAID_1 implementation, I undertook the following measures, which produced the corresponding results:
- After configuring the drives to RAID_1 and installing the HyperDisk drivers cum Win2K utility, I copied my entire Quake 3 Arena directory onto the RAID_1 "virtual" drive.
- In Win2K, I yanked out the secondary master power cable linking one of the RAID_0 drives, half-expecting the system to hang. Yet, to my utter amazement, Win2K continued seamlessly! I then verified its resilience, by copying other files into the remaining RAID_1 drive without interruption and ensured their integrity. No problems whatsoever. It really seemed as if no drive had failed!!
- Upon restarting my PC and reaching the HyperDisk BIOS startup screen, a prominent beep is issued, which complains of a disconnected drive and degraded mirror partition.
- Bypassing the HyperDisk startup screen, I booted into Win2k nonchantedly and tested all functions related to the failed mirror drive again. Once more, no issues encountered.
- I then proceeded to shut-down the machine, and reconnected the "failed" RAID_1 drive.
- On booting into Win2K, the HyperDisk utility kicked in autonomously and starts to rebuild the mirror drive!! Several screen-shots of the rebuilding process are attached below for reference:
HyperDisk Rebuilding Process illustrated
HyperDisk Rebuilding Process again
In addition, the whole rebuilding process doesn't degrade system performance to a slow crawl. Notably, mundane tasks of surfing, emailing, etc, are still concurrently implementable without sustaining much of a performance hit!!
- After 20-30mins, my 02 x 30.5GB IBM HDDs were fully mirrored once more...
In a nutshell, the RAID_1 implementation on the WO2-R really testifies both autonomy and seamless userbility, thereby guaranteeing info redundancy & reliability with added convenience.
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