Fault Tolerant Volumes [XP Pro]

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I always believed that Windows XP Professional did not support the creation of fault tolerant disk volumes i.e. Raid-5. I thought that fault-tolerant volume creation is only supported on Microsoft Windows Server products.

Me and a few colleagues went through a few Microsoft based questions today and this popped up in one of my questions and I got it wrong as the answer was Windows XP Professional supports the creation of fault tolerant volumes.

After arguing about it I thought ok I will ‘check’ on the web. And I found this on the Microsoft website…

You cannot create mirrored volumes or RAID-5 volumes on Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP 64-Bit Edition-based computers.

However, you can use a Windows XP Professional-based computer to create a mirrored or RAID-5 volume on remote computers that are running Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. You must have administrative privileges on the remote computer to do this.

Now is it just me or does this not make sense? The first part confirms what I believe to be correct.

The second part states that it can be done with a XP Pro based computer. Wouldn’t that be classed then as a XP based computer therefore not supporting the volumes?

I am sure there is a straight forward explanation staring me in the face but can anyone clear this up for me.

I am googling it at the moment just wondered what people thought.

 

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the fault-tolerant volume itself isn't on the Xp machine.
to me it sounds like XP doesn't support fault-tolerant volumes, but it supports creating them (granted, not on itself).

just as i can't have Active Directory installed on my XP machine, but i am able to create objects and control AD through my XP machine.

 

Ok omni I agree with what you are saying there.

The question that I received was basically something like this (Mods please remove if this breaks any forum rules – I have not copied the question from any copyright material it is just an example of the type of question I received)

"If someone is running Windows XP Professional workstation containing two 4 GB hard disks is there is a way to mirror the disks so that if one disk crashes, they could still work using the other one?"

Now that to me shows that the user is trying to mirror the disks on the actual XP Pro machine and not supporting a mirrored set on another server machine.

So how can a mirrored set be created on an XP Pro machine? I don’t think it can but the answer stated that it could.

 

My understanding is that XP does not support fault tolerant volumes.

You can use a hardware based solution to implement one on XP, just as you would on a server, but I don't believe that XP supports a software version of RAID.

 

Exactly what I think

I am confused now as the questions came from a Microsoft training kit

 

that definately suggests creating the volume on the XP machine itself. which cannot be done.

 

I think the only way that we are going to get a definite answer on this is for someone to set up a VM then try and create a fault tolerant volume

Any Takers ????

 

Don't worry fella I will be trying this when I get home. I don't think it can be done, infact I am positive it can't be done.

More than likely the question / answer has been printed wrong. Just wanted to clear it with you lot to see if it was just me. My colleagues do agree with me but some of them also believe that books don't lie!

 

I agree. Must understanding of it is also that XP Pro cannot have fault tolerant volumes.

 

You're right guys, "Add Mirror" is an option in Disk Management but it is ghosted out. I imagine it's only selectable when you are using disks on a remote server.

 

Classic case of test question vagueness and/or inaccuracy. As if it wasn't hard enough to pass as it is ...