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Raid Setup?

Doctorwho_10
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For my new PC build I want to do a raid setup, however I am not familiar with everything so this question may sound useless however I am trying to find the answer. The question I have is, should I do the raid on my C drive putting the system files in the raid or keep the C drive separate and just raid my D drive?

Again note I have never done this so I am not as familiar with the setup

Im planning on a raid 6 maybe a 5 with the proper amount of SSD needed.

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20 minutes ago, Doctorwho_10 said:

For my new PC build I want to do a raid setup, however I am not familiar with everything so this question may sound useless however I am trying to find the answer. The question I have is, should I do the raid on my C drive putting the system files in the raid or keep the C drive separate and just raid my D drive?

Again note I have never done this so I am not as familiar with the setup

Im planning on a raid 6 maybe a 5 with the proper amount of SSD needed.

What would be a good start is explaining what you are trying to accomplish.  What's the motive behind the RAID?  Extra redundancy (and if so how much)?  What kind of performance are you looking for?  There are performance implications to the different RAID levels (especially when looking at RAID 5 or 6).

Next helpful piece would be some platform information.  Do you have a RAID card you are planning on using or are you looking to do it using your onboard controller?  Windows?  Linux?

And just so this is out of the way at the beginning:  RAID is not a backup 😉

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1 minute ago, Livin said:

What would be a good start is explaining what you are trying to accomplish.  What's the motive behind the RAID?  Extra redundancy (and if so how much)?  What kind of performance are you looking for?

Next helpful piece would be some platform information.  Do you have a RAID card you are planning on using or are you looking to do it using your onboard controller?  Windows?  Linux?

And just so this is out of the way at the beginning:  RAID is not a backup 😉

The motive behind the Raid setup is to have the redundancy of data in case of drive failure, and im currently facing that issue with my current setup and regretting not setting this up, I also have heard that there is a slightly better read on the data when set in a Raid config, whether or not that last part is true i don't mind. Im planning on having windows as the OS for the raid setup while panning on using the onboard controller for that, and for the redundancy. I am planning on using 4TB SSD's on either Raid Setup. so a total of 8TB space and depending on the raid the amount of redundancy for the SSD's

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3 minutes ago, Doctorwho_10 said:

The motive behind the Raid setup is to have the redundancy of data in case of drive failure, and im currently facing that issue with my current setup and regretting not setting this up, I also have heard that there is a slightly better read on the data when set in a Raid config, whether or not that last part is true i don't mind. Im planning on having windows as the OS for the raid setup while panning on using the onboard controller for that, and for the redundancy. I am planning on using 4TB SSD's on either Raid Setup. so a total of 8TB space and depending on the raid the amount of redundancy for the SSD's

Why not just have a backup?

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2 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Why not just have a backup?

Definitely agree at considering this first.  Far less complicated and sounds like this is really what you're after.

 

3 minutes ago, Doctorwho_10 said:

I am planning on using 4TB SSD's on either Raid Setup. so a total of 8TB space and depending on the raid the amount of redundancy for the SSD's

If you do decide RAID is the direction you want to go....

Have you picked up drives already and how much storage do you actually need?  If you do go RAID, for what you're looking for a simple RAID 1 makes a lot more sense.  RAID 5 and 6 take significant hits on write performance and it doesn't really sound like you are looking for scalability.  RAID 5 doesn't get you any more redundancy than RAID 1 (single drive failure) and in many (but not all) you end up spending as much or more on the drives needed to get to the same volume size (minimum 3 drives and you lose the space of 1 on RAID 5 vs. 2 drives for RAID 1).  RAID 6 compounds on that further (needing minimum 4 drives and you lose the space of 2).  Most desktop chipsets also don't support RAID 6 as well.

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3 minutes ago, Doctorwho_10 said:

Great question, I have been thinking of keeping a back up as well. But would the back up be better than the raid ultimately, or do a combination of both?

RAID is not meant to be a backup, it's more meant to be there for up time on critical system.  Important data should always be backed up.  You don't need to invest in to more expensive SSD space to get a reasonable backup as well (the right hard drives are perfectly acceptable).  There are also online solutions that you can look at for reasonable pricing that gives you geo-redundancy (so if you have a fire/flood/etc. your data is still safe).

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1 hour ago, Doctorwho_10 said:

Great question, I have been thinking of keeping a back up as well. But would the back up be better than the raid ultimately, or do a combination of both?

RAID protects you against hardware failure. A backup protects you against data loss.

 

If you lose a file for whatever reason (e.g. accidentally deleted), RAID isn't going to help you. Having a redundant copy of that file in a backup will. RAID will only help, if one of your drives fails, because the data should still be on the remaining drives. The RAID level determines how many drives you can lose, before you also lose data, in which case you'll want a backup again to restore it.

Remember to either quote or @mention others, so they are notified of your reply

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1 hour ago, Livin said:

RAID is not meant to be a backup, it's more meant to be there for up time on critical system.  Important data should always be backed up.  You don't need to invest in to more expensive SSD space to get a reasonable backup as well (the right hard drives are perfectly acceptable).  There are also online solutions that you can look at for reasonable pricing that gives you geo-redundancy (so if you have a fire/flood/etc. your data is still safe).

This. Raid is about uptime more than anything.

 

If you can live with a day or so of downtime (or however long it takes you to source a drive), then a backup drive that is not hooked up unless actively backing up is a better idea.

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The biggest issue with RAID and SSD's is the controller.

 

Onboard SATA RAID controllers like Intel's RST or AMD's version inhibit performance. They were designed for the latency of spinning hard drives, not modern SSD's. So, unless you opt for a hardware solution that's optimized for NVMe at best you will get a performance hit.

 

If you want to avoid SSD failure (1) Don't buy crap SSD's based on the cheapest price. (2) Get a UPS on your PC. Sudden power loss is in my experience the biggest killer of SSD drives. 

 

I would also rather have a single data center grade SSD on my PC or server than consumer SSD's in RAID 1 or spinning drives. I support a lot of legacy on prem servers, and I've ripped out the RAID controller on all of them and now using Intel Data center grade SSDs with no RAID. Migrating Windows server off the old RAID card and back onto a standard AHCI SATA interface with a robust SSD (tricky, but I'm good at it)  is great peace of mine. Also makes it a lot easier in the event the server dies to restore the server in a VM or another bare metal box without that stupid RAID interface in the way.

 

There is no substitute for proper backups on windows. The software (Macrium Reflect, etc) is free and works amazing.

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