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windows 7 on a RAID 5

3317 Views 12 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  the_beast, 
C
i just finished my first build. phenom 2 X4 965, asus m4a78t-e, 4GB ram and 3 1.5TB SATA in raid 5. 2 drives are WD green and one is seagate. i have the latest raid driver for win7 from asus website and during windows 7(ultimate 64) install i load the driver, it recognizes the raid but can't install on it or can't format a partition. it will install fine on the drives not raided but i really want to setup raid 5. i also tried ubuntu 9.10 on raid 5 but it didn't work, i think ubuntu wasn't recognizing it and tried to install on a single drive because i checked the drives after it failed and it formatted a partition on just the one drive. Any help would be appreciated, thanks
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HITandRUN
So you have your Raid array set up in the bios and later you have troubles? Are these drives brand new? Did you format them already?
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C
they are new but they have all been formatted a few times before and yes it sets up in the bios fine
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HITandRUN
Did you try not to load the drivers. I had troubles with my Win 7 and the Raid 0 whenever I tried to install the drivers. Finally I just didn't install the drivers and I guess Win 7 had them already anyway.
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C
well when i am installing windows it asks u where u want to install (which drive and partition) and if u don't load the driver, it wont recognize any drives
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HITandRUN
If you unplug all other drives and only have the raid array plugged in it wont have a choice but to install to the available partition.
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T
If you value having any performance at all don't install your OS onto a fakeRAID RAID5 array with Green disks. Your random write performance will be truely awful with that setup.

I would use your Seagate drive for your OS (I am hoping this is a standard, non-Green drive - if it is a 7200.11 make sure the firmware is up to date). Put the Green drives in RAID1.

Your overall space is the same, but this will be MUCH faster, and still offers redundancy for your data. Just keep a recent image of your OS drive on the RAID1 array (in addition to a decent backup) and you will be fine.

Linux will not install to a RAID array built using an onboard controller.
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C
i guess i will try that 'the beast', thanks for both your inputs. the wd are green dives but they are 7200, and the seagate isn't green but is also a 7200. so i thought they would be same performance.
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T
None of the WD Green drives are 7200rpm - they are ALL 5400rpm drives.
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C
you are right, only 5400. that sucks, i thought they were 7200, i wouldn't have bought them if I'd known that.
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ComGuards
Quote:


Originally Posted by crf450guy
View Post

i just finished my first build. phenom 2 X4 965, asus m4a78t-e, 4GB ram and 3 1.5TB SATA in raid 5. 2 drives are WD green and one is seagate. i have the latest raid driver for win7 from asus website and during windows 7(ultimate 64) install i load the driver, it recognizes the raid but can't install on it or can't format a partition. it will install fine on the drives not raided but i really want to setup raid 5. i also tried ubuntu 9.10 on raid 5 but it didn't work, i think ubuntu wasn't recognizing it and tried to install on a single drive because i checked the drives after it failed and it formatted a partition on just the one drive. Any help would be appreciated, thanks

What size partition were you trying to install to? If you're trying to install to one massive partition, you'd run into problems with the Partition being bigger than 2TB. You'd have to create a smaller partition for installing Windows on... 3x 1.5TB in RAID-5 gives an effective size of 3TB... sooo... yeah, does it let you create a smaller partition?

Anyways, like what was suggested - RAID-5 performance with those drives is going to be horrendous... Not to mention that the Green drives with their power-save features might cause the array to drop out of sync every once in a while. Really not recommended to run RAID of any level with Green drives
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C
well i got 7 installed on the seagate 7200rpm and i got raid 1 working with the 2 WD green drives. not what i originally wanted but i guess it works. thanks 'beast'. guess im still kinda bummed about how slow the drives are though. i have this super-duper processor and it just sits there waiting for the hard drives. and yes i tried installing it on a smaller size partition but it wasnt working either. on a side note, my CPU idles at about 24deg celcius (with amd cool'n'quiet enabled). and about 29 for the mobo.
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T
what do you have on the Green drives that keeps the cpu waiting? For their intended usage (media storage etc) the Green drives are pretty much as fast as their 7200rpm counterparts, as their high storage density makes up somewhat for the lower spindle speed. They just aren't great for OS applications as their random performance is a little lower due to the higher rotational latency.
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