Best Way and how to recover SSD raid 0 after drive failure on MSI GT72 Dominator Pro

[NYRANGERS423]

I will have some important information on the SSD raid 0 on my new GT72 Dominator (PRO) laptop and I will need to be able to still use the laptop if the x4 SSD raid 0 fails. I planned on to partition the other internal HD, half for a clone of the original SSD raid array, and the other half for more normal storage. Then I will use my external drive storage to make regular backups of the raid array. So the plan if the SSD raid fails will be to boot to the HD partition that was cloned originally and use the external drive to restore the data and continue with normal use until I can replace the failed SSD drive in the raid array.

Is this a good plan and if it is I don't really know where to start. Thanks for the help. Any other ideas are also welcome.

[Django]

Backup is always a good idea regardless. Depending how much data you are using you could recreate the Raid0 with three drives and restore your backup then when the 4th drive comes add it to the array as is.

 

Depending how much you value your data you should have a remote backup. If the laptop is destroyed say in a fire for instance, then you've lost your backup also.

[D2ultima]

I'm not too sure if you're allowed to have a clone of an OS like that (because both will be bootable). At best you could run Raid 1 of the SSD's RAID 0 with your HDD's partition, but that slows down the entire system's write speed to a crawl and of course defeats the purpose of the SSDs.

 

The best thing I could say you should do is make regular backups of it all? Or simply avoid RAID for that reason.

[NYRANGERS423]

Backup is always a good idea regardless. Depending how much data you are using you could recreate the Raid0 with three drives and restore your backup then when the 4th drive comes add it to the array as is.

 

Depending how much you value your data you should have a remote backup. If the laptop is destroyed say in a fire for instance, then you've lost your backup also.

OOO so you could use the raid drives that didn't fail even being out of the original x4 config. How would I just add in the 4th drive after I replace it. I thought the data in raid is evenly spread between all the drives? And yes I will have a external or remote drive incase the Laptop gets destroyed. My big question is what is the best way to continue use if a SSD drive fails. 

 

I'm not too sure if you're allowed to have a clone of an OS like that (because both will be bootable). At best you could run Raid 1 of the SSD's RAID 0 with your HDD's partition, but that slows down the entire system's write speed to a crawl and of course defeats the purpose of the SSDs.

 

The best thing I could say you should do is make regular backups of it all? Or simply avoid RAID for that reason.

I wouldn't boot to that drive unless the raid fails. I would then use the external drives image backups to restore the data to the normal HD to use instead of the raid config, until I can replace the failed SSD drive.

[D2ultima]

OOO so you could use the raid drives that didn't fail even being out of the original x4 config. How would I just add in the 4th drive after I replace it.

That won't work. You would need to use RAID 5 for this; where you can rebuild the array (mostly) using data from the other drives. Raid 0? One drive gets a single bad 4MB sector (can't really happen on a SSD; but other ways SSDs could potentially fail, though uncommon) and ALL your data is gone forever.

[Django]

OOO so you could use the raid drives that didn't fail even being out of the original x4 config.

 

Yes, once you have restored the backup to the new 3 drive array. Using Intel RST UI in windows makes it very easy. The help file will explain, once you add the extra drive the data on the other three will be migrated across the 4 while you carry on working.

 

Similarly if you are RAID ready with just one drive, you can add a second drive later on to produce a RAID0 array and data will be migrated to the new member disk. Here's an example http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-msi-ge60-2013-owners-lounge.722196/page-73#post-9556273, the priciple for adding drives is very similar.

[NYRANGERS423]

I got it. Even though SSD failure is uncommon I want to be safe with my backups. Thanks Django, D2ultima.