Boot from raid card?

[Sir_Awesome]

I am relatively new to raid cards and server gear but here goes. I recently aquired an old Dell Poweredge 2800 which uses only scsi and PCIx expansion and I want to adapt it to use sata drives. My question is can I boot from a drive that is on a raid card? Once I get it to boot into windows I will setup a raid mirror with another drive. Here is the raid controller I had in mind http://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-8-port-SATA-PCI-X-card-AOC-SAT2-MV8-8xSATA-cables-/252377784720?hash=item3ac2e36190:g:N9MAAOSw9ZdXKXu~

[Sunshine1868]

Yes, RAID controller cards will present a "virtual disk" to the motherboard. In this case, your best bet would be to take 2 drives (since you said you wanted to mirror them) and do the RAID 1 mirroring in the RAID card itself. 

[Sir_Awesome]

6 minutes ago, Sunshine1868 said:

do the RAID 1 mirroring in the RAID card itself. 

 

6 minutes ago, Sunshine1868 said:

take 2 drives

my only problem is I have the windows OS on one drive and the system reserved partition on another (because I didnt pay attention when installing windows in the initial system) so I will need to make the system restore disk then get it all on one drive before I do the raid 1 in the raid controller

[Sunshine1868]

This changes things. To make a drive available to a RAID controller, it will need to be wiped and prepped by the RAID controller itself... so if you're really fond of the files/OS on the drives, you probably shouldn't do this....

[Sir_Awesome]

2 minutes ago, Sunshine1868 said:

This changes things. To make a drive available to a RAID controller, it will need to be wiped and prepped by the RAID controller itself... so if you're really fond of the files/OS on the drives, you probably shouldn't do this....

So I even if I get the OS onto a single drive I can't use a drive with an existing OS?

[Sunshine1868]

2 minutes ago, Sir_Awesome said:

So I even if I get the OS onto a single drive I can't use a drive with an existing OS?

Yup. This happens with nearly every RAID; in order for a drive to be made available to a RAID it must be wiped.

[Sir_Awesome]

5 minutes ago, Sunshine1868 said:

Yup. This happens with nearly every RAID; in order for a drive to be made available to a RAID it must be wiped.

Could I use the raid controller simply as a sata expansion card and just do software raid for all the drives?

[Sunshine1868]

3 minutes ago, Sir_Awesome said:

Could I use the raid controller simply as a sata expansion card and just do software raid for all the drives?

It depends on the card you use; if the controller supports a JBOD mode, then it will likely allow for a complete write-through mode for all disks attached. Best practice is to use a hardware controller for RAID though as software RAIDs can be lost if the software goes.

[Sir_Awesome]

7 minutes ago, Sunshine1868 said:

It depends on the card you use; if the controller supports a JBOD mode, then it will likely allow for a complete write-through mode for all disks attached. Best practice is to use a hardware controller for RAID though as software RAIDs can be lost if the software goes.

I know this sounds kinda monotonous but I'm just trying to go without buying another windows license. Could I setup an initial raid configuration with all 8 drives paired in raid 1s and then clone the OS from my old drive onto one of the raid 1s?

[Sunshine1868]

1 minute ago, Sir_Awesome said:

I know this sounds kinda monotonous but I'm just trying to go without buying another windows license. Could I setup an initial raid configuration with all 8 drives paired in raid 1s and then clone the OS from my old drive onto one of the raid 1s?

cloning from old drive (without letting it join a RAID) would work. 

[Sir_Awesome]

1 minute ago, Sunshine1868 said:

cloning from old drive (without letting it join a RAID) would work. 

awesome that sounds like what im going to do. My thought was to get one of those sata to usb adater cables

[Sunshine1868]

12 minutes ago, Sir_Awesome said:

awesome that sounds like what im going to do. My thought was to get one of those sata to usb adater cables

that would work.

 

you will need to plug two blank/unwanted HDDs (of equal capacity) into the RAID controller and configure them together as a RAID 1. 

Then you will need to plug in the USB-SATA adapter to the useful windows HDD. From there, clone the windows HDD over to the RAID 1 "drive". 

 

ba-da-bing! 

 

ps: do not erase the USB-SATA drive. Be sure you can boot from the RAID 1 Array before deleting/formatting the drive.