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Disk Stripe Windows XP

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What is disk striping?

Disk striping is a technique by which data spans multiple hard drives. All hard drives involved in the stripe set are simultaneously read from and written to. For example, if a striped set of disks consists of three hard drives, then the data will be read, and written about three times faster because Windows is distributing the workload among three hard drives. Creating a striped set is an inexpensive way of dramatically increasing performance.

Before you begin

In Windows XP, striped sets with parity aren’t supported. This means that if any of the drives associated with the striped set have a problem, the entire volume (striped set) will be lost. Therefore, you’ll have to back up frequently.

Once you create a striped set, only Windows XP will be able to read that striped set. There’s a way of making Windows 2000 read the set, but overall, no other OS will access the striped set if you have a dual-boot system.

Creating a striped set

Before, creating the striped set, you need to set it up. Install the hard drives. But, remember, your primary hard drive cannot be included in the striped set because you can only create striped sets on empty hard drives. You need a least two new hard drives to create a striped set, but you can use up to 32 hard drives. Because this striped set is software driven, there is no requirement as to what type of hard drive you must use. IDE and SCSI are both acceptable.

After you install the drives, boot Windows XP and log in as the Administrator. Next, enter the DISKMGMT.MSC command at the Run prompt to open the Disk Management console.

When the Disk Management console opens, locate the new disks and right-click them. Be sure to right-click the reference to the disk itself, not the space on the disk. Select the Convert to Dynamic Disk command from the context menu. When you do, a wizard will open, verifying that you want to convert the disk into a dynamic disk. Click Yes. When the conversion completes, repeat the process for each disk in the striped set.

To create the striped set, right-click in the empty space on one of the new disks and select the New Volume command from the context menu. Windows will then launch the New Volume wizard. When the wizard asks what type of volume that you want to create, select Striped. Then, follow the instructions to complete the wizard. The process involves simply selecting which disks should be included in the striped set. Your striped set is now ready to use.

Creating a striped set is a low cost alternative to giving your PC a serious performance boost. Just remember to back up your striped set often, because it is more prone to failure than standard partitions due to the number of disks involved.


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Harry is a freelance writer, computer consultant, and Internet marketer. His writing projects include ghostwriting, copywriting, web site content, DTP, editing, and technical writing. His computer consulting work includes installation, setup, and troubleshooting computer systems. His credits include articles for Internet Day, Internet World, Advertising Today, Advertising Age, L-Advertising, Computer Edge, and a host of others. Harry recently published a book on computer repair and copywriting. You can check out his samples and what he offers at his site by going to http://www.writeformedia.com/portfolio.htm.