Hello,

I'm new to the Windows Server technology.
I have a new Dell PowerEdge1800 with 2 x 160 GB SATA drives. No RAID controller. I intend to use the server to host 3 or 4 small MSSQL databases for a small population of users. I'd like to make sure the data is safe, reliable and secure. Most importantly I cannot afford to lose data due to a failure or have the system go down at all. I know that hardware mirroring is the right way to go but I'll ask the question about that later. My questions for now are :

1) How do I setup software mirroring on this server ?
2) Do I use a utility provided by Dell to setup and manage the mirrors or do I just use the Windows Disk Mgmt software ?
3) Should boot and system partition be on a separate physical drive from data and application partitions/volumes ?
4) If so then how should I organize my 2 x 160GB disks ? Do I need to install a third hard drive to satisfy this requirement ?
5) Would it be adequate if I partition the 1st drive into 3 - Boot&System, Applications, and thirdly Data. Then mirror those 3 partitons onto the second physical drive ?
6) If at some point in time I decide to move to a hardware RAID 0 or 1, will I lose data stored under the software RAID/mirror ?

Your quick responses will be highly apprecaited. Thank you all in advance.

Al

Sorry I forgot to mention.

The copy of 2003 server is the standard version.

When I turned on the Dell server for the first time. It took me through a setup routine and eventually asked me to install Win2003. So I had no choice but to create one partition for now : 20GB on the 1st physical drive. Other than install Windows updates I have installed or done nothing else yet.

Cheers,
Al

You can use software mirroring under Computer Management tool.

You said you have no choice but to make a 20 gig partition on 1st physical drive but mention earlier that you have two 160 gig drives.

Leave the 20 gig partition as your system/boot partition. Create one or two other partitions for data.

Right click on each partition and create a mirror on the second drive. That will be sufficient.

The SATA drives that came with your DELL should have come attached to a single channel sata controller which means that you can do hardware raid instead. For that you would need to boot up the raid/disk management software that came with your dell and create the hardware mirror. You should not lose what has been installed so far.