Quick Newb Question: RAID 0 with files contented Hard Drives?

[vformula00]

I ran out of SATA ports on my motherboard.

 

I have no experience with RAID or RAID card.

 

If I get a RAID card and use RAID 0 and attached hard drives with files already inside them, would the card wipe out all my existing files on those hard drives and start new blanks?

[Electronics Wizardy]

If you use a raid card it will wipe all data when you setup a raid array.

 

You probably don't want a raid card, just get a hba to give more ports to the system. Then you can seutp raid in your os if you want to.

[vformula00]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If you use a raid card it will wipe all data when you setup a raid array.

 

You probably don't want a raid card, just get a hba to give more ports to the system. Then you can seutp raid in your os if you want to.

For HBA cards with integrated RAID, is there a way of not using the RAID aspect and just use it like JBOD card?

 

I have no experience with HBA and RAID cards, instead just with JBOD cards. I am use looking at some simple SATA ports x8 Hard drive cards.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, vformula00 said:

For HBA cards with integrated RAID, is there a way of not using the RAID aspect and just use it like JBOD card?

 

I have no experience with HBA and RAID cards, instead just with JBOD cards. I am use looking at some simple SATA ports x8 Hard drive cards.

hba normally means jbod, only, so there is no raid.

 

How about this?

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Dell-PERC-H200-6Gb-PCI-e-SAS-SATA-8-Port-Raid-Controller-From-US-Ship/192560383405?epid=28028261775&hash=item2cd57e45ad:g:DMEAAOSwKRBbF7L9

[vformula00]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

hba normally means jbod, only, so there is no raid.

 

How about this?

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Dell-PERC-H200-6Gb-PCI-e-SAS-SATA-8-Port-Raid-Controller-From-US-Ship/192560383405?epid=28028261775&hash=item2cd57e45ad:g:DMEAAOSwKRBbF7L9

The items says "Raid Controller" is that ok for JBOD?

[Electronics Wizardy]

14 minutes ago, vformula00 said:

The items says "Raid Controller" is that ok for JBOD?

It will work in jbod mode if you don't setup a raid array, or you can force jbod by flashing the IT firmware on it.

[Thirdgen89GTA]

Many raid cards support being flashed with IT firmware which turns them from a Raid into an HBA. 
 

but converting the firmware isn’t really necessary unless the host is likes direct disk access (FreeNAS is an example).

 

for windows leaving it as a raid card is fine , beneficial and preferred even. 
 

Raid 0 is for speed only. In a basic 2 disk setup it’s half as reliable as a single drive. With 3 it’s 1/3rd as reliable. This is because if any single disk fails then the entire array is lost. 
 

Running JBOD concatenated arrays is almost as unreliable as Raid 0. Since the failure of any drive means that drives contents are lost and you still need to recover the array. 
 

running them as single drives is fine and how you’d use a HBA. 
 

personally I would never never put my critical data on anything less than a raid 6 or straight raid 1 setup. And even then I’d still have a daily backup.

 

My financial/ identity stuff resides on an encrypted raid z2 array. The data is encrypted to hell and back at rest, then that encrypted archive is uploaded to a cloud service. 
 

My finance/private data is a comparatively small amount of data though. Less than a gigabyte overall. 
 

the rest of it like software installers, games, movies, music all reside on raid Z2 or raid z3 arrays but is not backed up off site. If I really need to I could just re-rip the bluray collection if the array failed.