Raid 0

MooMoo444

MooMoo444

MooMoo444

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My 500gb HDD went pop the other day so I've been thinking of my options.

Ideally I dont want to have to go through this again so I want a backup drive. Though I also want to utilise the speed RAID 0 offers, so I was wondering..

Is it possible to set up 2 drives in RAID 0, and have a 3rd drive backing them up in RAID 1? Or would it be easier to just have the 3rd drive standalone and manually save important things twice in case one of the RAID 0's fails.

Also if one drive in RAID 0 goes boom, is there any way to get data from the other one or will it be impossible?
 
I'm not TOO hot on RAID (have a RAID 0 array myself but haven't dabbled in anything further) but I think RAID 3 is what you're after.

You'll have the two drives in stripe mode and then another drive as the parity drive to back the data up.

If the two striped drives go down, you should be able to access the back-up drive like a normal standalone drive. That's what happened on the last RAID 1 array I had a play with.
 
MooMoo444 said:
Is it possible to set up 2 drives in RAID 0, and have a 3rd drive backing them up in RAID 1?
Click to expand...
No, a three drive setup like that is not possible. You could use 4 identical drives in a RAID10 or 0+1 array but neither of those is a backup, they're just a way of providing hardware redundancy.

To have a proper backup the other copy should be physically separate and updated independently of the "master" copy. A RAID1 mirror does not protect you, for example, from an unintended deletion since the delete is instantly replicated on both disks.


MooMoo444 said:
Also if one drive in RAID 0 goes boom, is there any way to get data from the other one or will it be impossible?
Click to expand...
There are tools which can recreate data from a RAID0 array if you have both disks but if you have only one of them since all but the smallest files are split between the disks then recovery is impossible.
 
yes - RAID 5 but you will need 3 identical disks. It's raid 0 with parity.

If you want the combination of RAID 0 and 1, then RAID 10 offers full disk stripping with mirror. For this you will need 4 identical drives.

That said, Raid 5 is a good solution but you will be best off making off-line backups too.
 
Alright then its sounding like 2 500gbs in RAID 0 and a backup one of like 200GB for important media/games etc.

How do you set RAID 0 up?.. I geniuinely have no idea.

Also for RAID 0, do the drives have to be the same size, manufacturer, speed and cache?

edit; If what I originally wanted is possible (RAID 5, as you say) how do you set that up also?
 
Ideally they have to be of the same type etc..

When machine posts, then hit CTRL-I (intel RAID controller) and select which raid type you want.. It's pretty self explainatory. It will ask you if you want to select RAID-0, RAID-1 etc.. Once you have selected the RAID set will be created, the System will require a format and windows re-installed..

Make sure you provide the SATA RAID driver handy for your mobo. These are different to the normal SATA drivers you maybe using. Press F6 to load 3d party drivers and select the raid drivers. Once done, load windows as normal.
 
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Do you get SATA cables when you buy SATA HDDs? My motherboard should have came with 4 of them but because it was a pre-built system I only got two - one for DVD and one for HDD. Would I be in my rights to get them to send me out the rest of the motherboard bits I 'should' have?
 
With RAID 3, you have all but 1 disks holding the data, and 1 disk dedicated to parity.

For example, Disk 1, 2 and 3 holding file 'A', and disk 4 holding 'Ap' the A parity, then for file 'B', the data is still writen on disks 1-3, parity on 4.

with RAID 5, the location where the parity is stored changes, so 'A' could be stored the same as RAID 3, but when writing 'B' it could use disks 1, 2 and 4 for data, and disk 3 for parity. This way there is parity spread out over all disks.

It also should be noted that RAID 0 and RAID 1 dont use parity and so are simple to implement, but any RAID level that require parity requires CPU time to work out the parity calculations, and so it could be a good idea to get a proper RAID card if you plan on using a RAID level with parity, so that any parity calculations are offloaded from the CPU onto the RAID controller.
 
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