Hello peeps,

Hope somone can help me in clearing up some concepts of software based RAID1.

Prerequisites

SIS966L southbridge - Support RAID 0/1/JBOD
2 x 160GB Maxtor SATA Hardrives
Windows XP

Now....

My first question is

What determines which drive is the 'master' drive in the array?

I refer to 'master' as the drive that will 'mirror' to the other hard drive.

My understanding is that one of the drives will be the 'live' drive which will send data to the other hard drive.

Does the 'master' hard drive hold initial boot configuration different from other drive?

The reason I am asking these questions, is because I have a problem that if the drives are disconnected from the array and an attempt is made to boot up from each of the drives independantly, one of the drives boots to windows fine will the other drive gives the message 'operating system not found'

I have given the commands fixboot and fixmbr, but still cannot get this drive to boot windows, even thought the OS is intact.

So I think my understanding is flawed of how RAID 1 works and hopes someone can help me in correcting any misconceptions I may have.

Thats about it, hope someone can help...