RAID1 windows vs chipset

[dedus]

Just started a new fresh build with msi x470 and some 970 ssd's
I have experienced data loss in my life due to hdd failure and now im a bit paranoid about keeping my data safe and pc fault-tolerant

 

My plan is to use two 970 m.2 in mirrored array with windows system.

So the question is:

Windows software volume mirroring
OR
MSI hardware RAID1 with amd drivers

 

I know that pc running windows on mirrored volumes will still work even if one of the drives shutdown completely.
Is it same for hardware raid? How hard it will be to restore array with one drive replaced?

 

Thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

If you don't want to lose data, you want backups, not raid. Backups are much better at keeping data safe.

 

But if you want raid, storage spaces in windows is the best way to go here.

[dedus]

17 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If you don't want to lose data, you want backups, not raid. Backups are much better at keeping data safe.

 

But if you want raid, storage spaces in windows is the best way to go here.

I do backups, but i need my pc to be somewhat fault-tolerant because i do my work on it, i cant backup data for every second.

Windows mirror volume wasnt best experience for me, just want to know if motherboard raid is any better.

[TheKDub]

Between Windows RAID and Motherboard RAID, I'd go with Windows. If you were to use a dedicated RAID card, then that'd be a different story.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, dedus said:

I do backups, but i need my pc to be somewhat fault-tolerant because i do my work on it, i cant backup data for every second.

Windows mirror volume wasnt best experience for me, just want to know if motherboard raid is any better.

Were you using storage spaces? Thats what you want to use for raid on windows these days, don't use the raid in disk management.

[HarryNyquist]

4 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Were you using storage spaces? Thats what you want to use for raid on windows these days, don't use the raid in disk management.

Oops. Is there a specific reason for that? I did a striped volume in disk management and have a bunch of data on it already. :X

[Guest]

6 hours ago, dedus said:

Just started a new fresh build with msi x470 and some 970 ssd's
I have experienced data loss in my life due to hdd failure and now im a bit paranoid about keeping my data safe and pc fault-tolerant

 

My plan is to use two 970 m.2 in mirrored array with windows system.

So the question is:

Windows software volume mirroring
OR
MSI hardware RAID1 with amd drivers

 

I know that pc running windows on mirrored volumes will still work even if one of the drives shutdown completely.
Is it same for hardware raid? How hard it will be to restore array with one drive replaced?

 

Thanks

I would strongly suggest getting a dedicated hardware raid card if you are wanting to use raid of any sort. It not only takes the load off your CPU, it is also far more reliable in so many ways. RAID is not an alternative to a good backup routing, and IMO not worth the effort if you are using any software based raid.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 hours ago, HarryNyquist said:

Oops. Is there a specific reason for that? I did a striped volume in disk management and have a bunch of data on it already. :X

storage spaces supports many more new features and is just better, it was made to replace disk management raid.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 hours ago, Phill104 said:

I would strongly suggest getting a dedicated hardware raid card if you are wanting to use raid of any sort. It not only takes the load off your CPU, it is also far more reliable in so many ways. RAID is not an alternative to a good backup routing, and IMO not worth the effort if you are using any software based raid.

software raid can be better than hardware raid in many ways, and this nvme raid, where there are basically no raid cards that would work.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

software raid can be better than hardware raid in many ways, and this nvme raid, where there are basically no raid cards that would work.

That makes quite a few assumptions. We don't even know what standard the drives in question conform to.

 

M.2 does go a long way to improve the old SATA raid that adorned many a motherboard. IMO, nothing beats a decent raid controller. I must admit though, as I work more on enterprise class systems I may be quite biased. Have seen far too many failures on motherboard based RAID to trust it as much as I possibly should. This is especially true in cases where the motherboard has failed but due to the nature of the RAID implementation it is not possible to just replace the motherboard and expect things to work.

[Electronics Wizardy]

35 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

That makes quite a few assumptions. We don't even know what standard the drives in question conform to.

There samgsung 970's, so they are nvme only

 

35 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

M.2 does go a long way to improve the old SATA raid that adorned many a motherboard. IMO, nothing beats a decent raid controller. I must admit though, as I work more on enterprise class systems I may be quite biased. Have seen far too many failures on motherboard based RAID to trust it as much as I possibly should. This is especially true in cases where the motherboard has failed but due to the nature of the RAID implementation it is not possible to just replace the motherboard and expect things to work.

yea motherboard raid is just bad. Hardware vs software depends on the use and features you want, both can be very good. Industry is moving to software raid and software defined storage though.

[Guest]

45 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There samgsung 970's, so they are nvme only

 

yea motherboard raid is just bad. Hardware vs software depends on the use and features you want, both can be very good. Industry is moving to software raid and software defined storage though.

Thanks for the heads up on the 970s, wasn’t aware of that.

 

I will be interested to see the impact of software raid. I know all our enterprise kit is fully dedicated hardware only. Different class of kit though.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Phill104 said:

I will be interested to see the impact of software raid

Should have almost no impact on cpu usage. Modern cpus are more than fast enough to handle the raid calculations of fast ssds easily, and this is a easy raid 1. 

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Should have almost no impact on cpu usage. Modern cpus are more than fast enough to handle the raid calculations of fast ssds easily, and this is a easy raid 1. 

It is not just that. In a crash situation for instance, most good hardware raid will have the writes cached and that will continue even after a power outage. Old cards used a battery, modern ones a capacitor. The cache was also used to help speed up certain write types. I would also be interested to see how easy new software raid setup deal with certain types of failures.

 

I fully agree on the comment in your firs post in that RAID in itself is not a valid backup solution. I’ve seen grown adults in tears more than I care to mention who relied on raid. Most upsetting was a woman who lost 7 years worth of work to a dual drive failure. The system had automated backups to tape, but nobody in all those 7 years and two hardware refreshes told her she needed to put the days tape in the drive before she left for home.

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

It is not just that. In a crash situation for instance, most good hardware raid will have the writes cached and that will continue even after a power outage. Old cards used a battery, modern ones a capacitor. The cache was also used to help speed up certain write types. I would also be interested to see how easy new software raid setup deal with certain types of failures.

 

I fully agree on the comment in your firs post in that RAID in itself is not a valid backup solution. I’ve seen grown adults in tears more than I care to mention who relied on raid. Most upsetting was a woman who lost 7 years worth of work to a dual drive failure. The system had automated backups to tape, but nobody in all those 7 years and two hardware refreshes told her she needed to put the days tape in the drive before she left for home.

Good software raid like zfs or storage spaces will fix the powerloss problem by having a good journal and keeping track of writes, and handle power failures pretty well. 

 

How did that data loss situation end up for you? did you try any data recovery? 

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Good software raid like zfs or storage spaces will fix the powerloss problem by having a good journal and keeping track of writes, and handle power failures pretty well. 

 

How did that data loss situation end up for you? did you try any data recovery? 

Because of the situation and the nature of the data, recovery was not possible or even able to be attempted. Poor lady was distraught. Some of the information was able to be re-created from records but so much of it was lost.

[dedus]

I just figured out that AMD RAID in X470 does not support NVME storage at all, sata only!

So, im going with windows software "volume mirroring", the topic can be considered closed.

Maybe someone will be interested in my results - i heard many opinions on windows raid, people saying thats in every configurations its a performance degradation.

 

In my case i gain read speed and lost equal on write speed
Single 970 EVO Plus does 3566 MB/s Read and 3291 MB/s Write (seq)

Two 970's in windows mirrored volume - 5383 MB/s Read and 1702 MB/s Write (+1817 Read and -1589 Write)

 

NVMe's seems fine in this configuration, samsung software shows that TRIM is enabled on both devices

[Sawtaytoes]

Your data is correct.

 

Your read speed will double because Windows is smart and can read half the data from both drives as if it's a RAID0.

 

RAID1 should halve the write speed because you have to write to both at the same time. There's probably not enough bandwidth to go around for the number of PCIe lanes on your NVMe controller for PCIe Gen3.

 

Also, SATA can't do speeds that fast so it's definitely NVMe.

 

I'm starting to think Windows RAID is the way to go. Lots of benefits like TRIM.