Intel Fakeraid and Hard Drives

Euphoria · 26 Nov 2009 at 18:51

I dont suppose anyone has any good experiances with intels fakeraid, i am having a few issues trying to find two hard disks to run as a mirror but all i find is WD Gleen/ Black drives with timeout issues, Seagate have issues with firmware and raid, i dont go near samsung etc.

All i want is a good combo of drives that work with Intel ICHxR in RAID1 without any lockups, freezes etc. has to be 1TB min.

mdovey · 26 Nov 2009 at 19:07

I've had no real trouble (touch wood) with Western Digital RE2-GP disks with Intel RAID.

However, avoid version 8.9 of the Intel RAID driver - this has caused a lot of people (including myself) problems regardless of hard disk brand/model. Version 8.8 is fairly solid however.

Matthew

mdovey · 26 Nov 2009 at 19:09

Alternatively configure the BIOS to AHCI (or IDE) and use software RAID (RAID0 and RAID1 should be posible in Windows disk manager if you set the disks to dynamic and you have an seperate boot disk; and for linux you have mkraid)

Matthew

Euphoria · 26 Nov 2009 at 19:51

Yeah i noticed that with 8.9 too but it was too late i installed it and then installed 8.8 on top of it. I have to say its more stable but still does have its moments. I am tempted to go back to ubuntu and use software raid as i never had issues but since moving to windows 7 i havent really had time to reinstall.

Xelene · 26 Nov 2009 at 20:07

What's the RAID for? Performance or Data Security? If it's for Data Security you are better off just running the drives separately and backing up one t'other.

PistolPete · 27 Nov 2009 at 00:19

Use the WDTLER tool to sort the timeout issues.

I've used it on 8x 1TB Greens, 2x 640Gb Blacks and 4x 80Gb Velociraptors... to date (touchwood) not had a single timeout issue.

Euphoria · 27 Nov 2009 at 00:40

WDTLER tool only works on older model drives, drives newer than sept 09 have this disabled and are unable to change. But what i am gathering is feedback what will hopefully aid my decision of what hard disks to buy.

Its a pity WD confuse things a little by releasing seperate RE3 drives that have this enabled + a few extra other features to aid raid. If seagate had their firmware fixed i would most likely go down that route but i have been WD for a long time now without any serious issues

PistolPete · 28 Nov 2009 at 20:14

Euphoria said:
WDTLER tool only works on older model drives, drives newer than sept 09 have this disabled and are unable to change.

I hadn't heard this one - I bought my WD Black 500GB last month and I've just been able to change the TLER using the tool - so I'm guessing then that it refers to drives made / or with firmware from Sept 09.

I'll have to bare this in mind as I was planning to start building a new array using 1.5TB WD Greens (or maybe 2TB if the prices fall a bit more).
As I've currently still got 27% free space on my current array this was most likely to start in spring '10..... Thanks for the heads up.

Euphoria · 28 Nov 2009 at 20:27

the WDTLER are drives before sept 09, all newer drives have this disabled and the WDTLER util does not work. it looks like WD have caught on because its like the old 9800SE into a 9800 Pro softmod.

The RE drives are better than the blacks but only just as they are more or less the same.