A few RAID questions

280 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by RichardScarry21, Mar 17, 2009

u238

Discussion Starter · Mar 17, 2009

In my quest for space for my ever-increasing collection of data and my desire for speed, I have decided to move to RAID 0. I have never before attempted to create a RAID of any sort, but have read up on the concepts and hardware a good deal.
I have a very large number of programs that I would rather not reinstall when moving to a new drive. Normally, I would simply clone my C drive onto the new disc. Can I create the RAID 0 with new drives and image the old disc on in the same way? In regards to price / performance, what would be advisable for the RAID controller? There just isn't any way I can justify a several hundred dollar card. Something tells me that using the existing ICH9r chip controller may be a better idea than getting a cheap card. My final question is backup related. How do you suggest backing up a 1TB + 1TB RAID 0? I would think that a 0 + 1 array would be the most convenient, though I have heard that this isn't the best idea on the ICH9r controller. Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

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RichardScarry21

· #2 · Mar 17, 2009

I'm not entirely sure if you can do it simply clone that, 2 TB is HUGE, so you must have a lot of stuff. I recently RAID'd two 500gigs from a 750 HDD and RAID'd them together, then used an external HDD enclosure to have my original hard drive seen and I copied it over.
OR attach it as part of the non-raided volume SATA port if you have more than 2 and set to boot off of the RAID volume, then the xfer rates are pretty quick.

But that doesn't really answer your question. I know it was a pain in the ass setting up the RAID on mine, but I had cable issues.

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u238

Discussion Starter · #3 · Mar 17, 2009

Any and all input is appreciated.

Yeah, I do tend to collect a lot of useful and marginally useful things. I was thinking of backing up the new RAID onto a single disc periodically, but that would obviously only work before the used space exceeded 1TB. I could go the 2TB single disc route, but they are nearly 50% more expensive per GB than a 1TB drive, and a good deal slower.
I would really like input on whether 0+1 is a good idea with the ich9r chipset. I guess it would be wiser to have the backup clone isolated from the primary, though, which basically brings me back to square one. How do I go about backing up a 2TB RAID?

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Darren9

· #4 · Mar 17, 2009

On ICH9R you can run two partitions in raid0. Two 1TB partitions each cloned to a 1TB drive would back up the whole thing - similar to running 0+1. Otherwise with something like True Image you can select what to image and maybe get some compression, would depend on how much "marginally usefull" stuff you might be prepared to lose.

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RichardScarry21

· #5 · Mar 17, 2009

I would like to know more about these RAID drivers (like 400 on newegg!), are they that much better? I noticed a huge boost with my onboard driver, what would a card like that bring?

But I forgot to comment about how big your HDDs are, if you don't need that much space, smaller HDDs work just as well and more cost effective. That's the reasoning I had to go from 750 to 2x500 for the speed since I am never over 400 gigs.

And I would have a back up for sure. I don't know if it's my set up or what, but RAID0 has been a little unstable and initially ran with no overclocking, and directions out of the book and info online about how RAID0 works. If one HDD corrupts, both your HDDs will need to be cleared. It's settled down for me and was able to overclock.

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