Yah... wordpress / intensedebate doesn't do that great of a job with the spam filters sometimes. :)

As I understand it, If Windows won't boot it without drivers, it is not a full hardware RAID. Fake RAID solutions require drivers.

Yes, you should be able to. It should be pretty easy to test out - pull the drives out and slap them in another machine, they should be recognized just fine.

Good questions - unfortunately, I don't really know hte answers. I know that mirroring can take quite a while - I forget how long it took my drives to mirror initially, but it was shorter than a day. However, it sounds like you're striping across 3 disks and I can imagine that reorganizing from 2 to 3 disks could take a very long time. I'm surprised that it was trending towards 2+ weeks, however. I'd be interested in hearing how long it took in the end.

thanks for posting your results!

I have actually heard folks claim that "fake RAID" solutions should perform better - that was one of the reasons that I wanted to run these tests. I wasn't sure that I believed those claims. And my numbers showed that they weren't really true - I believe data, not rumor. The word "supposedly" was chosen for exactly that reason.

You're correct in that there is little to no real hardware advantage that fake RAID controllers provide - I've heard claims that the drivers that enable the RAID often work better than the RAID provided by the OS, or that "Fake-RAID can have solid performance due to high bandwidth, low latency interfaces to the CPU" due to close ties to the CPU's south bridge (http://www.servethehome.com/difference-hardware-raid-hbas-software-raid/).

I think it is important to validate these things for one's self.

Sure, particularly if you had results that were different from what I found.

Better viewing angle - there are games that suggest that it be at eye level and I've found that it works a little better up there.

And it allows for easier worship.

For a RAID 1 config, I'm quite certain you can pull out a disk and slap it into another machine with no problem. Afterall, they're just mirrored. :) This I did try with my setup.

For a RAID 0 config, I'm fairly certain you can transfer the disks from one Windows 7 machine to another, but I have not tried it myself. The key with most RAID configs, as I understand it, is to use the same 'controller' that laid down the bits when you move the disks. In a HW RAID 0 config, you'd have to get the exact same controller card to be able to move the disks across machines. For SW raid, it's the OS doing the controlling so you should need no special hardware - just the same software.

I'd love to hear from anyone that's tried this for themselves. Since I don't have a RAID 0 config, I can't prove or disprove it - and I haven't dug up specific docs on Win 7 saying either way.

Glad I was able to help - thanks for the notes on the changes you made. That's a good catch. I've updated the script to take into account single-lap file directories.

FYI - the correct fix is to declare the $datfiles as an array, and then add the new lap files to it. That way the [0] reference will always work later in the script:
$datfiles = @();
$datfiles += get-childitem Lap*.dat | Sort-Object;