RAID 1 - use onboard or buy a card?

Chrismk · 31 Jul 2009 at 14:10

Over the years I seem to have had more than my fare share of HD failures which has at least ensured I have a rigorous backup scheme in place

I am in the middle of assembling a new machine and I have two 1Tb drives which I would like to mirror. I have an Asus P6T Deluxe V2 board. I intend eventually to purchase another drive and set the three up as a Raid 5 and guess that a controller board would be the better option at that point.

However, in the meantime is the onboard raid an acceptable solution?

Sultan of Ping · 31 Jul 2009 at 17:39

I would be happy to run RAID 1 off of an onboard controller as an interim measure, so it should be fine. RAID 1 should not a replacement for a regular backup schedule, however.

If you plan to go RAID 5 in the future then a dedicated controller card is definitely the way to go, as RAID 5 really requires a true hardware controller solution rather than an onboard software-type controller to run well.

You'll also get extra features like hot-swap, hot-spare, online capacity expansion.

Your other option might be running 2 x 1TB in RAID 0 from the P6T onboard controller, for performance, and then backup to your third 1TB drive?

Chrismk · 31 Jul 2009 at 17:57

Thank you your Highness!

I guess I might lose some performance with RAID 1 but frankly I doubt I would notice since this new machine will fly compared to my old one!

I have a Raptor which I will be booting into for gaming.

I'm also responsible for our company's backup regime so in this case you are preaching to the converted. But I'm a bit wary of RAID 0 given my failure history

Sultan of Ping · 31 Jul 2009 at 18:18

Chrismk said:
I'm also responsible for our company's backup regime so in this case you are preaching to the converted. But I'm a bit wary of RAID 0 given my failure history

Most people learn the hard way when it comes to making backups, myself included. A few years ago a RAID 0 array I had failed and I lost all the girlfriend's photos - it was months before she forgave me!

I run a four drive RAID 0 array at home for my OS, but all my data is stored on a RAID 5 array on the server, backed up every night (and her photos)

miniyazz · 31 Jul 2009 at 20:01

PERC5/i is a good raid5 controller for the price, check the bay.

robmagee · 31 Jul 2009 at 22:40

The thing to remeber about raid 1 is its great for protecting aganst physical damage but useless if your software dies! Plus if so many of your hard drives are dying maby you should cheak your PSU/Surge protection. It was a poor PSu that killed all my old f1s

Chrismk · 31 Jul 2009 at 22:46

robmagee said:
Plus if so many of your hard drives are dying maby you should cheak your PSU/Surge protection. It was a poor PSu that killed all my old f1s

I'm going back over many years

Chrismk · 31 Jul 2009 at 22:52

Sultan of Ping said:
Most people learn the hard way when it comes to making backups, myself included. A few years ago a RAID 0 array I had failed and I lost all the girlfriend's photos - it was months before she forgave me!

I run a four drive RAID 0 array at home for my OS, but all my data is stored on a RAID 5 array on the server, backed up every night (and her photos)

Very wise! Actually one thing that still amazes me about backup/imaging software is that the default option is not to verify. I remember being caught out once when a restore file wouldn't.
And just recently I had a situation where no backups would verify correctly. A greater mind than mine suggested I checked the ram (which wasn't very old) since this is put through its paces during verification. I ran memtest and he was right.