System Mirror on two Non-Hot Swap Drives

[CA1134654]

Hello,
I have NetServer LC 2000r. NetRAID 4x18Gb Disks as RAID5 and 2x9Gb SCSI Non-Hot Swap Disks. NetRAID I can manage with NetRAID Assistant. What is the right way to mirror Non-Hot Swap Disks that will be with OS (w2k).
Thanks in advance
Alex

[CA893598]

Don't get confused between hot swap and RAID - all hot swap means is that the drives can physically be removed without powering the system down. You don't need hot swap drives to have RAID and you don't need RAID to use hot swap drives although they are commonly used together since they are complementary technologies.

You can connect the non hot swap drives to the RAID array controller and create a RAID 1 array (hardware mirroring) OR you can connect the non hot swap drives to a regular SCSI host adapter and use Win2K to create an "OS-driven" mirror (software mirroring).

Personally I'd choose hardware mirroring over software mirroring because it's typically easier to recover from a drive failure, but either way will work. Hardware mirroring typically also has a performance advantage.