Raid 0

[CobalTicz]

Okay so I have two identical WD Black 1TB HDD. I want to put them into raid 0 and want to know which way is better since I don't have a separate raid card.

 

Should I use the MOBO and setup raid or should I do it through windows 10?

 

Can I install windows onto it if I set it up through software? Doesn't seem so.

 

 

[scottyseng]

11 minutes ago, CobalTicz said:

Okay so I have two identical WD Black 1TB HDD. I want to put them into raid 0 and want to know which way is better since I don't have a separate raid card.

 

Should I use the MOBO and setup raid or should I do it through windows 10?

 

Can I install windows onto it if I set it up through software? Doesn't seem so.

 

 

WD Blacks aren't recommended for RAID. You should look at the Reds for that.

 

If you still don't mind and still want to go through with it, you have to use the mobo and set up the RAID there. You can't really install Windows without making the RAID array first.

[CobalTicz]

10 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

WD Blacks aren't recommended for RAID. You should look at the Reds for that.

 

If you still don't mind and still want to go through with it, you have to use the mobo and set up the RAID there. You can't really install Windows without making the RAID array first.

I'm researching a lot on it trying to decide what to do. This wasn't planned I just happened to have to identical drives and wanted to check out raid if it was worth it.

 

Seems like it's not for my situation.

 

 

[Ruhel]

35 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

WD Blacks aren't recommended for RAID. You should look at the Reds for that.

 

If you still don't mind and still want to go through with it, you have to use the mobo and set up the RAID there. You can't really install Windows without making the RAID array first.

How come WD blacks are not suitable for RAID? 

Thanks

[scottyseng]

25 minutes ago, Ruhel said:

-snip-

 

49 minutes ago, CobalTicz said:

-snip-

The Blacks, Blues, and Greens (Well, they're Blue now) have a issue where if the drive runs into a error, it tries to fix it. In the time it spends trying to fix it, it makes it look like the drive isn't responding...so the RAID controller will kick it off the array. If you have RAID0, that's instant death of the array.

 

The Red, Red Pros, and all of the enterprise drives have special RAID ready firmware that pretty much gives up on the error (and reports it) if it can't fix it in time.

 

Yeah, RAID0 would give a speed boost, but I'd heavily push you towards buying a small SSD first. You'll really notice the speed gains then. You also won't have to deal with the RAID controller slowing down your boot time.

[AceDaz]

On 13/03/2016 at 9:14 AM, scottyseng said:

 

The Blacks, Blues, and Greens (Well, they're Blue now) have a issue where if the drive runs into a error, it tries to fix it. In the time it spends trying to fix it, it makes it look like the drive isn't responding...so the RAID controller will kick it off the array. If you have RAID0, that's instant death of the array.

 

The Red, Red Pros, and all of the enterprise drives have special RAID ready firmware that pretty much gives up on the error (and reports it) if it can't fix it in time.

 

Yeah, RAID0 would give a speed boost, but I'd heavily push you towards buying a small SSD first. You'll really notice the speed gains then. You also won't have to deal with the RAID controller slowing down your boot time.

Thats interesting, I have been running 2 of my 2tb WD Blacks in RAID 1 for 4 years with no issues.

[scottyseng]

2 minutes ago, AceDaz said:

Thats interesting, I have been running 2 of my 2tb WD Blacks in RAID 1 for 4 years with no issues.

It depends. Some of the consumer drives might work fine, some might not (I think some Greens didn't have TLER before...it was a certain batch though). It's generally not a good idea to play with luck on servers though (Especially with that many drives). Also keep in mind that with more drives, you also play with dicer odds with consumer (Non RAID rated) drives.

[Eric The Tech Guru]

On 3/13/2016 at 9:14 AM, scottyseng said:

 

The Blacks, Blues, and Greens (Well, they're Blue now) have a issue where if the drive runs into a error, it tries to fix it. In the time it spends trying to fix it, it makes it look like the drive isn't responding...so the RAID controller will kick it off the array. If you have RAID0, that's instant death of the array.

 

The Red, Red Pros, and all of the enterprise drives have special RAID ready firmware that pretty much gives up on the error (and reports it) if it can't fix it in time.

 

Yeah, RAID0 would give a speed boost, but I'd heavily push you towards buying a small SSD first. You'll really notice the speed gains then. You also won't have to deal with the RAID controller slowing down your boot time.

I believe this is only true when running a hardware RAID with a dedicated RAID controller. If you use a software RAID in windows or in something like MDADM on Linux, you don't have this issue.

[leadeater]

29 minutes ago, Eric The Tech Guru said:

I believe this is only true when running a hardware RAID with a dedicated RAID controller. If you use a software RAID in windows or in something like MDADM on Linux, you don't have this issue.

The issue is the same with software RAID or any other software based storage system i.e. ZFS.

 

The essential problem is that when a disk without TLER encounters a sector read error it will never give up trying to read that sector so all I/O on the entire storage system will halt waiting for a response. Normally in a case such as this if a disk does not respond it will be marked as failed, forcing you to rebuild that disk rather than running a scrub and fixing the error.

 

This is bad since a rebuild usually takes a very long time and while doing so the array is in a degraded state either reducing performance or increasing risk, depends on RAID level etc.

 

Not knowing if a disk is actually failed or not can be a problem, either by trying to rebuild an array with a faulty disk or needlessly buying a replacement.

 

The actual chances of a read error is obviously low but the more disks and the larger they are the higher the risk. Running 4 disks at current sizes on the market for example is likely never to encounter an issue for ~3 years, this does not mean someone won't have an issue.

 

Basically it comes down to if you already have disks and they are not TLER then if you feel happy to use them in RAID then do so. If you are buying new disks then it is unwise to knowingly buy non TLER models.

 

Hard drive manufactures make NAS compliant models for a reason and it is not simply to charge more money for no benefit, TLER is not the only thing that these have over desktop models. I do think they can be over priced but there is little we can do about that.

[Qyoon]

On 13/3/2016 at 9:10 AM, scottyseng said:

WD Blacks aren't recommended for RAID. You should look at the Reds for that.

i used caviar black in raid 0 for like 5 years 100% fine and today they still work on a secondary machine...

They are not optimised for raid , but they are not bad at it.

[scottyseng]

39 minutes ago, Atsura said:

i used caviar black in raid 0 for like 5 years 100% fine and today they still work on a secondary machine...

They are not optimised for raid , but they are not bad at it.

As stated above, you might've gotten a batch without TLER (Back in the past, they did have blacks / greens in a certain batch that didn't have it). It's just not a wise idea to take a risk with a lot of non RAID ready drives (If you're buying new). Imagine if you did buy like 24 blacks and you did run into the TLER issue. What then? You're stuck with 24 Black drives that you can't use in the RAID array safely.

 

You can take the risk if you want though. It is your data. As for me, I'd rather just not risk it and buy Reds / Red Pros / Enterprise stuff. The Reds are cheaper than the WD Blacks anyway last time I checked...There's not much of a speed loss either with the Reds.

[Qyoon]

by the time i bought them WD weren't even existing in the market, it was Blue , Black , Green , RE4 and Velociraptor. no purple and red.

 

And nowdays i don't use HDD anymore in my own pc , just 2 with my freebox revolution as nas.

[scottyseng]

2 hours ago, Atsura said:

by the time i bought them WD weren't even existing in the market, it was Blue , Black , Green , RE4 and Velociraptor. no purple and red.

 

And nowdays i don't use HDD anymore in my own pc , just 2 with my freebox revolution as nas.

Yeah, back then the drives didn't have TLER issues...unfortunately WD and the other hard drive companies realized they could remove said feature and make NAS ready drives (and charge more)...I have a two old WD blacks as well, and they can do RAID (They're in that batch of RAID okay Blacks). But with new drives...they pretty much pushed it off to the Reds / Red Pros / Enterprise.