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Did I set up raid 1 correctly?

shirokado
By shirokado
in Storage Devices
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I didn't know how to set up a raid 1 array, so I used the "Create and format hard disk partition" thing in windows to make 2 hard drives mirror each other. Is that a proper raid 1? Or do I need to do it over with different steps.

Fractal Design Define R4 | MSI x79a-GD45 | 3960X @ 4.6Ghz | Lots of EK Blocks | EVGA GTX780Ti 3GB | Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4) DDR3 1866 | Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD | Western Digital Red 2TB x4 (Raid 10) | Corsair AX760 | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

 

 

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For future reference that's what we call a Soft RAID (software RAID). its not the best for performance, to get that you should be setting up your RAID1 within your motherboard on board RAID controller. But this will mean destroying all your data on the disk to crate the new RAID array.

Quack 🦆

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For future reference that's what we call a Soft RAID (software RAID). its not the best for performance, to get that you should be setting up your RAID1 within your motherboard on board RAID controller. But this will mean destroying all your data on the disk to crate the new RAID array.

So there's a bit of a performance hit. My 2 questions are, if 1 drive dies, is it simple to just put in another hdd and recreate the raid array? And is the performance hit bit enough that I won't be able to load videos off it smoothly

Fractal Design Define R4 | MSI x79a-GD45 | 3960X @ 4.6Ghz | Lots of EK Blocks | EVGA GTX780Ti 3GB | Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4) DDR3 1866 | Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD | Western Digital Red 2TB x4 (Raid 10) | Corsair AX760 | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

 

 

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1) Yep that's it. Recovering the array may take a bit of time however but this is to be expected (hardware or software)

2) no it will be perfectly fine for that, I am being pedantic when I say a performance hit but its minimal.

Yea I assumed recreating would take some time(I have like, 3.5TB of data :P)

As long as its not like "with software raid, if 1 drive dies, your raid and data is gone" I think i'll be fine. Right? All I want to do is store videos and stuff.

Fractal Design Define R4 | MSI x79a-GD45 | 3960X @ 4.6Ghz | Lots of EK Blocks | EVGA GTX780Ti 3GB | Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4) DDR3 1866 | Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD | Western Digital Red 2TB x4 (Raid 10) | Corsair AX760 | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

 

 

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Redo the RAID withing the motherboard bios, don't use RAID from Windows as it requires the HDD to be setup as dynamic. Dynamic disc cannot be read on other computers.

Could you explain how I would do that? I'm trying to use the 3rd party controller to setup the raid, but it doesn't show up in the BIOS.

Fractal Design Define R4 | MSI x79a-GD45 | 3960X @ 4.6Ghz | Lots of EK Blocks | EVGA GTX780Ti 3GB | Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4) DDR3 1866 | Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD | Western Digital Red 2TB x4 (Raid 10) | Corsair AX760 | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

 

 

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Could you explain how I would do that? I'm trying to use the 3rd party controller to setup the raid, but it doesn't show up in the BIOS.

Where is this 3rd party controller, do you have a SATA card? The SATA ports on your motherboard already supports RAID.

 

 

 

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Where is this 3rd party controller, do you have a SATA card? The SATA ports on your motherboard already supports RAID.

I looked a couple things up, and went into BIOS and changed it to RAID. I came accross 2 problems, 1. the guide i was looking at from overclock.net tells me to press ctrl+i, but that doesn't seem to do anything. And when I switch it to raid, my ssd doesn't want to boot into windows, it loads and then shows me the blue screen with the sad face

Fractal Design Define R4 | MSI x79a-GD45 | 3960X @ 4.6Ghz | Lots of EK Blocks | EVGA GTX780Ti 3GB | Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4) DDR3 1866 | Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD | Western Digital Red 2TB x4 (Raid 10) | Corsair AX760 | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

 

 

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I looked a couple things up, and went into BIOS and changed it to RAID. I came accross 2 problems, 1. the guide i was looking at from overclock.net tells me to press ctrl+i, but that doesn't seem to do anything. And when I switch it to raid, my ssd doesn't want to boot into windows, it loads and then shows me the blue screen with the sad face

Your SSD was never configured as raid, that's why when you set the controller to raid, it will not boot. Set it back to whatever it was. From your motherboard specs, only the 2 faster white sata ports supports raid, but your SSD has already used up one of the ports. I guess you no choice, but to just run that software raid.

Note that creating a raid setup will wipe out all data on that drive. so if you have anything important back up your data first.

 

 

 

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Your SSD was never configured as raid, that's why when you set the controller to raid, it will not boot. Set it back to whatever it was. From your motherboard specs, only the 2 faster white sata ports supports raid, but your SSD has already used up one of the ports. I guess you no choice, but to just run that software raid.

Note that creating a raid setup will wipe out all data on that drive. so if you have anything important back up your data first.

Oh... So I don't even have enough ports to do proper raid. Well then.

Fractal Design Define R4 | MSI x79a-GD45 | 3960X @ 4.6Ghz | Lots of EK Blocks | EVGA GTX780Ti 3GB | Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4) DDR3 1866 | Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD | Western Digital Red 2TB x4 (Raid 10) | Corsair AX760 | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

 

 

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it doesn't have to CTRL+i, some motherboard CTRL+Y

 

you should disable fastboot first to see the menu sometimes the newer machine boot too fast.

 

however you must understand something about RAID setup

1. Recovering RAID array sometimes doesn't goes well, most of times it just failed because the data before the warning failure show up already corrupted.

2. there's no performance improvement (if you were expecting that)

3. Recovering RAID array to another motherboard is impossible unless it was the the same motherboard, same goes with Hardware RAID by controller, unless it is the same controller.

 

I'm using RAID0 config, and the performance only great for benchmark, real performance... even slower than single drive. RAID1 speed? you will be disappointed.

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it doesn't have to CTRL+i, some motherboard CTRL+Y

 

you should disable fastboot first to see the menu sometimes the newer machine boot too fast.

 

however you must understand something about RAID setup

1. Recovering RAID array sometimes doesn't goes well, most of times it just failed because the data before the warning failure show up already corrupting your data.

2. there's no performance improvement (if you were expecting that)

3. Recovering RAID array to another motherboard is impossible unless it was the the same motherboard, same goes with Hardware RAID by controller, unless it is the same controller.

 

I'm using RAID0 config, and the performance only great for benchmark, real performance... even slower than single drive. RAID1 speed? you will be disappointed.

Well I wasn't really wanting RAID1 for speed. I just did it so if 1 drive just outright dies, all my data isn't gone. So if I get a new motherboard or something, how will I recover my raid data? Is it possible to take 1 drive out of the raid array, and use that as a single drive for a while(like 2-3 days)?

Fractal Design Define R4 | MSI x79a-GD45 | 3960X @ 4.6Ghz | Lots of EK Blocks | EVGA GTX780Ti 3GB | Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4) DDR3 1866 | Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD | Western Digital Red 2TB x4 (Raid 10) | Corsair AX760 | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

 

 

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nope you can't

RAID is like creating virtual drive by the system, so unless you use the system you can't access the drive.

So if my motherboard dies, could i reaccess it by using the same motherboard model? Or do I have the option of using 1 of the drives as a single drive and copy it somewhere else, recreate a RAID 1 array, and then copy it back.

Fractal Design Define R4 | MSI x79a-GD45 | 3960X @ 4.6Ghz | Lots of EK Blocks | EVGA GTX780Ti 3GB | Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4) DDR3 1866 | Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD | Western Digital Red 2TB x4 (Raid 10) | Corsair AX760 | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

 

 

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Thanks.

Fractal Design Define R4 | MSI x79a-GD45 | 3960X @ 4.6Ghz | Lots of EK Blocks | EVGA GTX780Ti 3GB | Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4) DDR3 1866 | Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD | Western Digital Red 2TB x4 (Raid 10) | Corsair AX760 | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

 

 

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