I want to scrap my Raid and go back to conventional setup, Advice needed

Lethagized

Lethagized

Lethagized

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So i've got a Raid 0+1 setup across 2 sammy 500gb drives. Apart from bragging rights with HD Tune, i'm not overly impressed with the real world performance gains. The computer has to initialise the raid controller on bootup, and this makes the boot time slower than that of a normal single hdd setup. Games don't seem to load much quicker and i'm also struggling for space, so would like the 400gb which is currently being used as a mirror to actually store stuff on instead.

My plan was to use acronis and take a copy of my C Drive, then reinstate the image onto one of the wiped samsung drives. Obviously i'll take what i need off the sammy before wiping and recovering the image of the os.

What's the best way to go about it? I really don't want to mess about reinstalling the os because it's all setup perfectly.
 
Thats what I have done in the past when I had RAID and changed to a single drive, cloned my copy of windows to a spare disc, rebooted and changed to normal IDE or ACHI mode in the BIOS, I think I went into the RAID setup before doing and undid the RAID.
Once I was happy booted the Acronis recovery manager and cloned the data back to one of my discs.
 
I've just recently had to boycott RAID.

It was way too unstable, the speed difference was minor and insignificant but the worst part was having to buy an exact model HDD from the same manufacturer in event of a HDD failure. Sounds fine initially but I had an array fail and it took three weeks to get my HDD back from RMA!

A solution would be to buy a new HDD but what happens if they no longer make that HDD model!

Now we have Windows 7 mirroring, which allows you to mirror your OS drive on any HDD brand with any size HDD. I currently use Acronis to take an image every week in case I delete a file or mess something up and (when set up) that error is mirrored.

These two combined kill absolutely any need for RAID in my rig. Windows mirroring... it's the way forward... in theory!
 
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Interesting thread.

I have always neglected RAID. Not because I'm clued up on it but more due to ignorance and simply not thinking about it. I was starting to think that a RAID-0 set-up for gaming was a no-brainer so I was checking out suitable hard drives on the store. Does anyone else have opinions on RAID-0 performance? I might make a new thread if this doesn't receive many responses.
 
i have just removed raid0 from my system as i didnt find it made any really difference to anything other than HDD benchmarking. maybe with super fast drives, but not for standard ones. my only issue now is, since i removed raid, windows wont see 1 of my drives :( it shows in the bios but doesnt pick up on the windows install screen or in drive manager :(
 
trentlad said:
I've just recently had to boycott RAID.

It was way too unstable, the speed difference was minor and insignificant but the worst part was having to buy an exact model HDD from the same manufacturer in event of a HDD failure. Sounds fine initially but I had an array fail and it took three weeks to get my HDD back from RMA!

A solution would be to buy a new HDD but what happens if they no longer make that HDD model!
Click to expand...

You don't need to use the same model of HDD, not even the same speed or capacity (so long as capacity is at least as big). I can't say I've ever found stability issues with any RAID arrays except those on rubbish controllers.
 
i have just removed raid0 from my system as i didnt find it made any really difference to anything other than HDD benchmarking. maybe with super fast drives, but not for standard ones. my only issue now is, since i removed raid, windows wont see 1 of my drives it shows in the bios but doesnt pick up on the windows install screen or in drive manager


You might have still the RAID property's on the the drive (which I had ) try to remove those
 
Robdata said:
You might have still the RAID property's on the the drive (which I had ) try to remove those
Click to expand...

i did before i disabled raid in bios. if i turn raid back on it says i have 2 single 500GB hard drives so im puzzled. might just be one drive has decided to call it a day.
 
AbsenceJam said:
You don't need to use the same model of HDD, not even the same speed or capacity (so long as capacity is at least as big). I can't say I've ever found stability issues with any RAID arrays except those on rubbish controllers.
Click to expand...

Is that so! I used to use the on board Intel ICH9R controller so I don't think any issue could stem from there.

I've been a PC enthusiast on and off for over 15 years but my only uses are gaming, browsing and media. When HDDs were pricey I used to have a data partition and an OS partition, but now I keep all my data and personal data on the OS HDD. I also used to have a Matrix RAID setup via my onboard Intel ICH9R controller and I was not pleased at all.

The main areas of contention were:
- Instability
- Barely noticeable speed boost
- Poor HDD repair options

I had a few issues with video drivers and the blue screens were enough to force the array to check if a rebuild was necessary every time... every time. The intel software would take a good hour checking the entire array which would cause my rig to become so sluggish due to the hard disk access. Not trying that again, no thanks! Maybe with a dedicated controller and decent RAID management software.

I honestly can't see the issue with Windows mirrors (soft RAID)? The only issue I can see would be turning my OS HDD 'Dynamic' but can someone explain the negative implications of that.
 
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Robdata said:
i have just removed raid0 from my system as i didnt find it made any really difference to anything other than HDD benchmarking. maybe with super fast drives, but not for standard ones.
Click to expand...

Completely agree.

I was using a pair of F3's with a single 500GB platter. So the single platter lowers heat and also increases speed. Then using Matrix RAID the RAID 0 partition used the inner area of the disk, so again, achieving the most optimal of speed.

The benchmark I witnessed was utterly staggering yet the speed improvement was completely insignificant.

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It's the poor random i/o that kills mechanical drive performance.... Couple that with filling up the RAID further degrades performance.

I've been stuck with an OS RAID for a good couple of years - only bumped by moving key programs to an SSD but stuck with the ever slowing RAID as I'm looking at an outlay of around 3-4 days to rebuild the OS / tweaks and features :o

Fortunately my RAID0(OS drive 300gig - 250full) just failed and have ordered just a single F3 1TB... My last successful acronis backup was made at 4am today but I'm wondering if I can partition the F3 to 300gig and dump my acronis backup on it.

The reason for the partition is to lock in the faster edge of the disk in the hope of speeding things up. The alternative would be to throw a 240gig SSD at it but that can only be done after cloning to the new HD / reducing the usage and recloning back :s CRAZY

Roll on new year holidays when I upgrade the whole platform :s
 
Dano said:
Unless I am totally mistaken RAID 0+1 requires 4 drives...
Click to expand...

Yeah, it does. From his talk of lack of space I think he actually had a RAID1 array, in which case it's no wonder there wasn't much performance difference. RAID1 gives you resiliency benefits and tbh with the cost of mechanical storage being so low I'd keep the mirror set up to save a bit of time and hassle when one of them dies.

If you want performance, get an SSD. That said back my usage pattern and patience is sensitive enough to storage bottlenecks that when I was on mechanical drives RAID0 made a significant difference.
 
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