Hello all, Hoping im posting this in the correct place, I need some help with setting a raid up/need to know what raid to use. Heres what im wanting to do, I have 2 Sata SSD 60GB drives that i want to stripe, But then have a 1TB SATA HDD that i want to use as a mirror of both the drives Is this posible to actuly do with a single Drive for a Mirror as i am not entirley sure it is, Any help/information is welcome, Yes i am a bit new into the raid configuations so i hope i have give you enough info My mobo supports the folowing raid configurations, Raid 0 Raid 1 Raid 5 Raid 10 Thanks again and hope i have posted this in the correct forum Damo
I'm not sure you can do that but in the event you can not you can always just backup your raid to the 1TB drive. You're obviously using the 2xSSDs for your OS, right?
Yeh i am wanting my OS on the 2 SSD Drives as a stripe, When you Say Backup as the 1TB Do you mean Just Like a backup thats not in the raid configuration ?
Ok then if i was to have 2 other 60 gig SSD's Could i run a raid 10 then ? Two Striped Two Mirrored ?
Yes you could easily. Altho if you really want backup, i'd suggest going a slightly cheaper route, raid 5. lemme try and visualize it for you. Raid 10: Require 4 of your disks. Disk 1 - 2 striped into Disk A 120gb raid0 Disk 3 - 4 striped into Disk B 120gb raid0 Disk A - B mirrored as the final disk 120gb raid 1+0 This will give you failover up to 2 sudden disk failures simultaneous, depending on which 2 disks fail.. say if both 2 and 4 died at the same time.. both the backup and the main set of data would be ruined. but if both 1-2 dies its safe.. 3-4 will have a full set of data to continue on. So basically up to 2 disks can fail simultenaous and it will still work. but it takes 4 disks to do this. Raid 5 You can do this with fewer disks, actually only takes a minimum of 3 disks, and will work with any amount above. Basically its similar to Raid 0 with a spare disk containing a parity bit. Disk 60gb + 60gb + (60gb-parity) gives you a 120gb disk With enough protection that if any 1 disk dies, the data isnt ruined because of the parity data on the spare drive. This will die if 2 drives fail simultaneous, but then again what are the odds of that happening? Alternatively theres Raid 6, which is the same with 2 extra parity drives, giving you protection for 2 simultaneous drive failures, and it doesnt matter which 2 break in that setup. so technically raid 6 would out do raid 10 in a 4 disk setup. Conclusion, if you want both speed and security.. dont bother with raid 10.. get a 3 disk raid 5. Or just do as others suggest, run backup software regularly onto the 1tb.
Thankyou everybody for your reply's has been verry usefull to know as like i said at the start of this topic i am only just getting into raid, Thanks for the explanations Julepalme i think i may end up going with the raid 5 configuration after reading what you posted, As backing up is O.K but i would forget to do this as with a mirror its done automaticley so this would be easer and safer in my oppinion, as you say not realy bothered about security, also one otherthing would you try to explain to me is the word "parity" been trying to figure it out all day but come across nothing, Thanks again Damo
Personally I'd go for onboard RAID 0 combined with software RAID 1 because it's safer than any of those parity based RAID modes and because parity based RAID modes require processing power to calculate parity, but also because onboard RAID 10 has limited flexibility except if you have some sort of uber motherboard. With software RAID 1 in Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate you can place the mirror pretty much anywhere you want, even on a harddrive that's connected to a different controller than the RAID 0 array of SSDs (or on a RAID 0 array of harddrives that's connected to a different controller, and so on) and you can also for example place the mirror on the slower performing zones of the harddrive / RAID 0 array of harddrives rather than the faster ones (harddrives typically use Zone Density Recording, so their outermost cylinders typically perform around twice as fast as their innermost ones). So basically, although you'll need a more expensive version of Windows 7 than the one that's used by most people, software RAID not only can improve cost effectiveness and / or allow you to balance performance a great deal according to your personal taste but, as a matter of fact it can even free up a PCIe slot that would otherwise need to be occupied by an expensive hardware RAID controller card. And besides, if that card fails you might still be in huge trouble unless you can easily replace it.
software raid is terrible its for noobs dont get me started , has way more cons then pros , Raid both the drives with raid 0 and dont bother raiding the hdd just use them as single drives.. For stripe size its really up to you, What do you do the most with your pc though, do you play alot of games or do you move alot of large files etc? I test each stripe via benchmarks and see which yields the best results, make backups of my install and just restore image .. piece of cake
the cons: * Performance: The best-known drawback of software RAID is that it provides lower overall system performance than hardware RAID. The reason is obvious: cycles are "stolen" from the CPU to manage the RAID array. In reality, this slowdown isn't that excessive for simple RAID levels like RAID 1, but it can be substantial, particularly with any RAID levels that involve striping with parity (like RAID 5). * Boot Volume Limitations: Since the operating system has to be running to enable the array, this means the operating system cannot boot from the RAID array! This requires a separate, non-RAID partition to be created for the operating system, segmenting capacity, lowering performance further and slowing boot time * Level Support: Software RAID is usually limited to RAID levels 0, 1 and 5. More "interesting" RAID levels require hardware RAID (with the exception of duplexing, mentioned above.) * Advanced Feature Support: Software RAID normally doesn't include support for advanced features like hot spares and drive swapping, which improve availability. * Operating System Compatibility Issues: If you set up RAID using a particular operating system, only that operating system can generally access that array. If you use another operating system it will not be able to use the array. This creates problems with multiple-OS environments that hardware RAID avoids. * Software Compatibility Issues: Some software utilities may have conflicts with software RAID arrays; for example, some partitioning and formatting utilities. Again, hardware RAID is more "transparent" and may avoid these problems. * Reliability Concerns: Some RAID users avoid software RAID over concern with potential bugs that might compromise the integrity and reliability of the array. While hardware RAID controllers can certainly also have bugs, I think it's reasonable to believe that some operating systems are more likely to have these sorts of problems than a good-quality hardware RAID controller would.
A modern system is so fast nowadays that the performance sacrifice is negligible with software RAID 0 and software RAID 1. In RAID 0 and RAID 1, the processor that's part of a hardware RAID controller is overkill for the most part because no parity calculations occur anyway (and Windows 7 actually doesn't even support software RAID 5 although you could work around this limitation using a freeware program called flexRAID). Decent hardware controller cards are usually so expensive that the money would be better spent on a faster CPU in many scenarios, including some professional setups. The onboard RAID 0 array of SSDs will still be available at boot time, obviously. The software mirror doesn't have to be. The most interesting one IMHO is 10 (1+0), sometimes referred to as "The Cadillac of RAID". All of the other ones are only a tradeoff and often not worth the money spent on a hardware RAID conttroller card. This happens more often than most people seem to realize, but OK. A hardware RAID controller normally doesn't include support for advanced features like being able to place a mirror on the slower performing zones of a harddrive and / or on a harddrive which is not connected to the same controller as the SSDs. Using a spare is possible with software RAID, and even my 2 year old laptop from the local supermarket has hotswap capability on its eSATA port. If a hardware RAID controller breaks, it's usually an even bigger problem to find a new one that works. The additional cost of having a replacement available at all times is what actually creates problems more often than not. If your OS cannot even access a mirror that's been created using Windows 7 then I must advise you to replace that OS with a much better one TBH. That's actually a benefit also, since it teaches people to not depend on incompatible and unreliable software utilities. Standardization is the way to go now. If you've encountered a critical bug in Disk Management with Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate then I'll be glad to get it fixed for you immediately.
Ok thanks again everybody, to be honist TruMutton i dont like the idea of raid software as in my oppinion things like raid should be handled via motherboard hardware not software running in windows but i would just like to say thanks for your idea your all being a great help in this new learning curve of mine any other sugjestions welcome just please dont turn this topic into a flamewar.
Integrated mobo raid chips, can be as bad as software RAID. If y have a power shortage or a BSOD and there is no flush to hdds by the chip, your RAID will be corrupt as well. This is specially significant with RAID0. If you really , really want RAID bandly for performance and uptime (NOT FOR BACKUP, RAID is NOT BACKUP), buy a PCIe 4x or 8x RAID Card, pref. with battery support. There are reasonable cards, with no battery but with internal cap. that will give them enough juice to flush and finish operations if something goes wrong. Don't be confused, there are also PCIe cards that rely on the O.S. just like cheap WinModems used to do......
It's not simply a piece of software running in Windows, it's Disk Management (click Start, type diskmgmt.msc in the search field and then hit enter). About protection against power outages, I can only say this: get a UPS (Ininterruptable Power Supply). Because using one of those hardware RAID controller cards that have a battery or a capacitor, you will still lose all your unfinished work that has not been sent to the card yet.
Any type of RAID can turn out to be a disaster (in Windows Vista, software RAID is bad indeed, so bad in fact that it's to cry for). Luckily however, Windows 7 Disk Management is getting both of my thumbs up right now.
