OS on a RAID 0 array

[Qrudow]

Hey Guys! 

 

I have just installed my OS on my RAID 0 array consisting of 2 500 GB Samsung EVO SSD's. Samsung Magician sees it as one drive and when benchmarking it in Samsung Magician i get 1000+ MB/s read/write speeds. But when i got into disk management, i have 465 GB unallocated storage. Can i intialise this or is it not safe? Also whats the reason for this happening? 

 

Cheers! 

[pwn_intended]

How big does your c drive show up in windows explorer?

[Qrudow]

465 GB, the same as before.. 

[pwn_intended]

So when you initialized the raid 0 in the first place you set it to use only half of the available space.

You can either set it up as a second partition, OR re-size the OS partition to take up all the space.

 

EDIT: To answer the original Q, both of these options are "safe" but it is ALWAYS recommended to back up critical data before doing anything with re-sizing or partitioning drives, just to be on the extra safe side.

[Qrudow]

I don't understand why the drive is recognized as 1TB drive in windows as it is running on the on-board raidcontroller on my mobo(signature).. 

[pwn_intended]

When you RAID 0, you COMBINE the drives so you get the full size of them together. RAID 1 will make the array equal to the size of just a single one...

[EmeraldFlame]

I don't understand why the drive is recognized as 1TB drive in windows as it is running on the on-board raidcontroller on my mobo(signature).. 

 

Because that is exactly what RAID is designed to do. It makes multiple drives show up as 1 drive in various different ways to increase reliability, performance, or both, depending on the RAID level.

Honestly, since you didn't know that, you may want to rethink using RAID, especially RAID 0 until you research a little more and understand the implications better. RAID 0 can be especially volatile and isn't recommended unless you are taking regular backups to another storage medium as it multiplies your chances of failure.

[Qrudow]

Because that is exactly what RAID is designed to do. It makes multiple drives show up as 1 drive in various different ways to increase reliability, performance, or both, depending on the RAID level.

Honestly, since you didn't know that, you may want to rethink using RAID, especially RAID 0 until you research a little more and understand the implications better. RAID 0 can be especially volatile and isn't recommended unless you are taking regular backups to another storage medium as it multiplies your chances of failure.

I think you misunderstood me, what i meant was i didn't know why windows dosen't recognize it as one 1 drive instead of seeing 2 drives as it is now.. Im fully aware how RAID 0,1,5,10 and works..

[pwn_intended]

I think you misunderstood me, what i meant was i didn't know why windows dosen't recognize it as one 1 drive instead of seeing 2 drives as it is now.. Im fully aware how RAID 0,1,5,10 and works..

 

Because when you initialized it, you did not tell it to use all the space, so thats why it is showing up as unallocated.

[Qrudow]

Because when you initialized it, you did not tell it to use all the space, so thats why it is showing up as unallocated.

I have checked and it says it should be one 1tb... 

[pwn_intended]

The ARRAY consists of 1TB, but the partition is only using half that. 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong here:

You had windows installed on a single SSD, then decided to make it into a RAID0. You made a backup image of your windows install (probably using the win7 image tool in windows) and then once you set up the RAID, you used that image to put your OS onto the raid instead of doing a clean install?

[Qrudow]

The ARRAY consists of 1TB, but the partition is only using half that. 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong here:

You had windows installed on a single SSD, then decided to make it into a RAID0. You made a backup image of your windows install (probably using the win7 image tool in windows) and then once you set up the RAID, you used that image to put your OS onto the raid instead of doing a clean install?

Yeah, only im on Windows 10 and cloned my drive to HDD and then cloned that back to the SSD array.

[pwn_intended]

Yeah, only im on Windows 10 and cloned my drive to HDD and then cloned that back to the SSD array.

 

Yup, even in win 10 its still called the win 7 image recovery tool or something.

 

All you need to do is re-size the partition that windows is on to take up the full size of the available disk.

This happened because most imaging tools will by default set the partition size to whatever the original is, unless you explicitly tell it to use the full available space!

[Qrudow]

Yup, even in win 10 its still called the win 7 image recovery tool or something.

 

All you need to do is re-size the partition that windows is on to take up the full size of the available disk.

This happened because most imaging tools will by default set the partition size to whatever the original is, unless you explicitly tell it to use the full available space!

Oh, i see that makes ALOT of sense. Thanks!