Raw Disk Access

[Romep]

Hello,

ich just installed Windows 7 RC + Virtualbox 3.0.2 on my HTPC. I also want to build a software raid in linux and encrypt it. I found several threads which said, that this wont work with a linux virtual machine under windows, but the last post was in 2007. I always get an error when executing the following command in command promt with administrator priviledges.

"VBoxManage.exe internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive1"
"Error opening the raw disk: VERR_SHARING_VIOLATION".

Is there a way to use a linux software raid this way under windows?

[baf]

Why do you want raid?
In this case you would probably not gain so much security anyway.
If it is for learning then create a couple of virtual disk and use them.

[Romep]

Safety, if one HDD will crash. And more space than on one single drive.

[baf]

Oh I see now "Windows 7" there is a big problem with raw disk access and windows vista/7. Microsoft has removed it unless you buy a special license and compile it into the program so its broken (some other threads here says).
Some other ways you might look at.
put the vdi:s on a windows raid.
use several vdi:s on different drives and use software raid in them.

[Romep]

So in Windows XP it will work? I think i'm going to switch back.

[baf]

As far as I know it should. I have never tested myself. Running on OSX.

[Romep]

It works. But do you know any other method how i can do this? I want to use the HTPC for watching BlueRay. So i definitely need Windows for the media center software (i choose mediaportal). And i want to build a cryptsetup+luks encrypted software raid on the same machine and serve files to my network. I thought it would be the best way, because if i want to seperate the two things (or any other reason) in the future i could definitly reuse the raid. If i got like 4*750GB harddisks (=2,25TB in raid) i can't put the files anywhere else and build a new raid (if you know what i mean). So it has to be a solution "for ever".

[baf]

In this case I must say that you should put the raid and crypt on the host itself. I saw that there should be windows clients too for luks.
This is because running over a VM does increase the crash risk in the case of power failures and such. This is because you get an extra layer of "latency" so you wont have a guarantee that data is synced when it should. So either look at windows solutions or get another machine to act as file server. And remember this machine can be pretty old and still be a good fileserver when you use linux on it.

[McStarfighter]

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... 213#p88849