Cant do raid 5?

[ziogref]

Hey guys.

I have bought my RocketRAID 640L adapter, plugged it in, attached my 4 HDD's and followed the very very little documentation to set it up (http://goo.gl/U1zkWP) and of course I ran into and issue. When I boot into the raid cards bios (I think I'm doing this) when booting up the pc (by pressing CRTL + M) i get to the area where i can build my raid, all 4 drives show up, but raid 5 isn't an option, however on their website it says it can, all I see is, RAID 1,10 and 2 other ones that look like Highpoints raid thing, something to do with SSD's and HDD's acting like an SSHD or something, any way, no raid 5 option

 

I know very little about setting up raid, as this is my first time. Im not sure if this should effect the build but i have 3 x 2TB Seagate barracuda drives (just normal desktop 3.5" drives) and a WD green drive 2tb drive (3gb/s not 6gb/s like the others) IMO i dont see how this can effect the card from building the raid as 3gb/s is still not a bad speed for HDD's to run at (i would only be streaming data as this is on my WHS2011 server) and my network is only 1gb/s.

 

also there is a bios update for the card, but apparently you can only run the bat file on a 32bit system not my WHS2011 server (I belive this is built ontop on server 2008 r2) which is 64bit.

 

has anyone had experience with Highpoint rocket raid cards? any tips i can try? any guidance? If the green WD HDD is an issue, i would like to explore other options before purchasing a matching drive, as its $120 where I live. I am at work until 0700 GMT+0 (converted to this time to make things easier) until then i cant really provide more information until i get my hands on my server.

 

Thanks

[Vitalius]

Before I even try to help you with this, I feel inclined to inform you that those Hard Drives are bad for RAID 5. 

RAID 5 stopped being effective for redundancy in 2009. It's only gotten worse since then.

It is still effective if you use the right Server grade Enterprise Hard Drives, but those Seagate Barracudas and WD Green are not Enterprise Drives.

You are only setting yourself up for failure if you set up RAID 5 with that. I suggest RAID 10, which your controller should be able to do. It will offer actual redundancy with decent (probably better) speed at the cost of disk space. 

You will have 4TB of storage space with that setup.

Edit: I just realized this is a production environment (i.e. you work for someone who needs this). 

I must stress that RAID 5 isn't good enough, especially with those drives. Things will be slow, and when a drive fails, the whole array has a very good chance of failing immediately. When I say "Very good chance", I'm talking 50%+. Which will only go up the longer the array lives for before a drive fails.

My company (a small business) was using RAID 5 with similar drives (Seagate Barracuda 1TB drives, 7 of them). Our array failed because of what that article talks about.

We had pay over $10,000 to a data recovery company to get all the data back. You don't want to be responsible for that in the future. It's not fun.

[ross06187]

This might help

 

but it sounds like you are doing it in the bios. 

 

in general the first step is to enable each drive as raid

then create a new volume and add the drives

select raid type

 

then build.

[ziogref]

Before I even try to help you with this, I feel inclined to inform you that those Hard Drives are bad for RAID 5. 

RAID 5 stopped being effective for redundancy in 2009. It's only gotten worse since then.

It is still effective if you use the right Server grade Enterprise Hard Drives, but those Seagate Barracudas and WD Green are not Enterprise Drives.

You are only setting yourself up for failure if you set up RAID 5 with that. I suggest RAID 10, which your controller should be able to do. It will offer actual redundancy with decent (probably better) speed at the cost of disk space. 

You will have 4TB of storage space with that setup.

Edit: I just realized this is a production environment (i.e. you work for someone who needs this). 

I must stress that RAID 5 isn't good enough, especially with those drives. Things will be slow, and when a drive fails, the whole array has a very good chance of failing immediately. When I say "Very good chance", I'm talking 50%+. Which will only go up the longer the array lives for before a drive fails.

My company (a small business) was using RAID 5 with similar drives (Seagate Barracuda 1TB drives, 7 of them). Our array failed because of what that article talks about.

We had pay over $10,000 to a data recovery company to get all the data back. You don't want to be responsible for that in the future. It's not fun.

I read the link about raid 5 and did a bit of research, and as for the hassle with the card and what i have read (including the "write hole") I might settle for raid 10 as i only did have 4tb previously, i will just have to remember to delete old un-needed files. Also this was for my home server, not for a business, nothing that contains important files.

[brob]

I read the link about raid 5 and did a bit of research, and as for the hassle with the card and what i have read (including the "write hole") I might settle for raid 10 as i only did have 4tb previously, i will just have to remember to delete old un-needed files. Also this was for my home server, not for a business, nothing that contains important files.

 

If the files are not important why bother with RAID at all. Good backup should be all that is needed.

[Vitalius]

I read the link about raid 5 and did a bit of research, and as for the hassle with the card and what i have read (including the "write hole") I might settle for raid 10 as i only did have 4tb previously, i will just have to remember to delete old un-needed files. Also this was for my home server, not for a business, nothing that contains important files.

Oh, then that makes a bit of a difference. 

 

If the files are not important why bother with RAID at all. Good backup should be all that is needed.

This. Except you could do RAID 10 for good performance and better backups. RAID 1 kind of is backup. Not really, but kinda.

[ziogref]

If the files are not important why bother with RAID at all. Good backup should be all that is needed.

 

Oh, then that makes a bit of a difference. 

 

This. Except you could do RAID 10 for good performance and better backups. RAID 1 kind of is backup. Not really, but kinda.

I didnt want to say this, but this is my backup solution, kinda. before you rage at me listen. the data i have i would prefer not to lose, however in the event that it does, that will suck, however i do keep backups of my important files in multiple areas. Another reason i want to raid, is i would rather my server not go down, as it hosts a 24/7 game server of mine, for me and a few friends. Also Im doing a Certificate IV in Business and ICT (Its an Australian thing, Basically I get paid to get a Qualification type thing but I get paid to do it, not that its very much) and i can apply this raid thing to my Units i have to do.

[Vitalius]

I didnt want to say this, but this is my backup solution, kinda. before you rage at me listen. the data i have i would prefer not to lose, however in the event that it does, that will suck, however i do keep backups of my important files in multiple areas. Another reason i want to raid, is i would rather my server not go down, as it hosts a 24/7 game server of mine, for me and a few friends. Also Im doing a Certificate IV in Business and ICT (Its an Australian thing, Basically I get paid to get a Qualification type thing but I get paid to do it, not that its very much) and i can apply this raid thing to my Units i have to do.

Then go RAID 10. RAID 5 will only hurt you later without good HDD's. 

RAID 5 cuts performance by about 20% from a single drive (so say you were using it at 100MB/s, you would get 80MB/s with RAID 5 of 4 of those drives). 

[ziogref]

yeah i have done a raid 10, but know im having more issue's even when that green drive is gone

[brob]

yeah i have done a raid 10, but know im having more issue's even when that green drive is gone

 

The only RAID I bother with anymore is 1. Anything else really only belongs in environments that truly require fault tolerance and can afford the proper equipment and time.

[ziogref]

I fixed it finally. I had to use my Green drive as my Boot drive, then i bought anothe Baracuda drive to match the other 3, then i made it a GPT disk instead of a MBR, now i have all 4tb + redudancy