RAID Drivers

RAID drivers are special programs that are used with hard drives for the purpose of improving fault tolerance and performance. Raid drivers may also be used to combine two or more hard drives to increase total hard drive storage space.

RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks. The main function of RAID is to allow all the individual drives in an array work together as a single larger drive. This would allow using several (cheaper) smaller drives to equal one large (and more expensive) drive. In addition, RAID technology could be used in different ways so that the user could set up a RAID system not only to increase hard drive size, but also to create redundancy between two or more drives to maintain the integrity of data. Normally, a special hardware chip, called a RAID controller, was used to control the individual drives. However, over time, more sophisticated operating systems and devices allowed for the RAID controller to be a software program that managed the multiple disks and presented all of them as one to the operating system and CPU. This software is a RAID driver.

The RAID driver provides the kernel based programming that instructs the CPU and/or operating system how to deal with the multiple drives, and to see them as basically one drive. There are several types of RAID technology, but the most common types implementing a RAID driver are RAID Level 0 and RAID Level 1.

In a RAID 0 setup, the RAID driver uses programming to save data on multiple hard drives in a “striping” format; file data is written simultaneously to multiple drives in the array which act as one drive. In a RAID 1 setup, the RAID driver uses programming to save data on one disk and duplicate it on another. The total storage space is not added between the two drives, but data integrity is increased. If one drive fails the other will be used. Initially, RAID technology was used more at the RAID 0 Level to increase storage space but as technology provides for much larger hard drives at reasonable prices, users are implementing RAID 1 for data integrity. There are several other RAID Levels, but these are most often used on servers.

Common Problems Associated with RAID Drivers

1) Total system failure, including the inability to finish the boot sequence by initiating the operating system

2) Lost or corrupted data on the hard drive

3) Inability to utilize more than one hard drive in a RAID setup

Troubleshooting RAID Drivers

If a RAID driver fails to function properly, the end results are seldom subtle. Normally, if the RAID driver malfunctions the hard drives are rendered unusable and the computer will fail to boot to the operating system. On occasion depending on the RAID Level setup, lesser failures such as corrupted or lost data may be experienced. IMPORTANT NOTE: RAID drivers almost always must be installed BEFORE the operating system.