New to Raid (Raid 5 Question)

[Excal13]

Hi Everyone,

 

Currently running two WD Red 3TB HDD in Raid 0. I'm looking to get another 3TB and run my Raid 0 (which using windows software Raid) in Raid 5.

 

speed is important to me, on a scale of 1 - 10 I would say it would be a 7. I'm very happy with the current speed of my Raid 0 using windows software Raid

 

1) Should I get a Raid Card? If so which one, because I don't need something crazy and expensive.

 

2) Any thoughts and/or suggestions?

 

3) If a HDD were to fail, how long does it take to rebuild with a Raid card? How long does it take to rebuilt without one?

 

I have a 5820k with a small OC to 4.1 GHz with an msi gaming carbon MOBO.

 

Thanks for your time,

Excal

[CoinDuckling369]

I advise using an raid controller,

I found one not to expensive at Newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124093&cm_re=raid_controller-_-16-124-093-_-Product

Im looking now for point 3

 

[manikyath]

1: if you're gonna go raid 5, you *should* get a propper raid card, and unfortunately a propper raid 5 card is pricy.

 

2: a few:

- you cant "add a drive to make a raid 0 a raid 5", it'll involve copying over all files to a different location, and setting up a new array.

- do you care about data security? because if the array doesnt contain any critical data, you shouldnt bother with raid 5. and if it does, you shouldnt be running raid 0 in the first place.

3: probably about the same, but it's more so that a raid card is the "safer" solution to this problem.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, CoinDuckling369 said:

I advise using an raid controller,

I found one not to expensive at Newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124093&cm_re=raid_controller-_-16-124-093-_-Product

Im looking now for point 3

 

"not a hardware raid controller"

 

that's what they call a "fakeraid" card, which is essentially just a sata controller, with a piece of software that allows you to set up a software raid from within your OS.

 

they are to be avoided if wanting to raid, because in essence they're just a HBA.

[CoinDuckling369]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

"not a hardware raid controller"

 

that's what they call a "fakeraid" card, which is essentially just a sata controller, with a piece of software that allows you to set up a software raid from within your OS.

 

they are to be avoided if wanting to raid, because in essence they're just a HBA.

Yeah I was looking at the factory info and there I saw this is just an PCIe to sata

[CoinDuckling369]

An good Raid card is about $100

 

[AnonymousGuy]

Does the mobo BIOS not support Inter RST and that RAID?  Software raid is just awful because you're at the mercy of the OS not fucking you over, which good luck.  At least with mobo raid you can generally move it around to different systems without issue.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, CoinDuckling369 said:

Yeah I was looking at the factory info and there I saw this is just an PCIe to sata

in raid, essentially, if it's cheap, it's probably garbage.

 

there's some chinese raid 10 cards that do really well, but i wouldnt rely on them for any critical data that isnt at least on a cold backup as well

[fjdhdhcyfhf]

have you seen the speed of raid5?

[manikyath]

Just now, AnonymousGuy said:

Does the mobo BIOS not support Inter RST and that RAID?  Software raid is just awful because you're at the mercy of the OS not fucking you over, which good luck.  At least with mobo raid you can generally move it around to different systems without issue.

the issue with mobo raid is that resetting your bios (or your OC failing, triggering a bios reset) could/will wipe your raid settings, essentially losing the array.

[AnonymousGuy]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

the issue with mobo raid is that resetting your bios (or your OC failing, triggering a bios reset) could/will wipe your raid settings, essentially losing the array.

I have 2 arrays that have been with me through 4 motherboard chipsets from Z77 to X99.

 

EDIT: the only thing I have to do is switch frome AHCI/IDE to RAID in the BIOS if I CMOS reset.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, AnonymousGuy said:

I have 2 arrays that have been with me through 4 motherboard chipsets from Z77 to X99.

because you know how to restore an array from just the drives, ask barnacules how that goes when you do stupid things

[AnonymousGuy]

Just now, manikyath said:

because you know how to restore an array from just the drives, ask barnacules how that goes when you do stupid things

I editted my post, I just have to switch the SATA type to RAID from AHCI and the drives / arrays are automatically detected again on reboot.

 

You only have to restore an array if the controller dies, which for mobo RAID is extremely unlikely.  Of course a hardware raid controller is more robust in terms of recovering from failure (see my signature storage server setup), but my desktop history has found mobo raid is fine.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

I editted my post, I just have to switch the SATA type to RAID from AHCI and the drives / arrays are automatically detected again on reboot.

 

You only have to restore an array if the controller dies, which for mobo RAID is extremely unlikely.  Of course a hardware raid controller is more robust in terms of recovering from failure (see my signature storage server setup), but my desktop history has found mobo raid is fine.

which is what you say, and then barnacules' raid screwup happened

 

its not that its hard to make things work, it's that a screwup is also very easily done, and can be rather catastrophic.

[Excal13]

Thx for all the replies. I understand I cannot just "add" a third drive to make it raid 5, I have a spare 6TB HDD I can copy the files too first.

 

The more I keep reading about fake raid, the more paranoid I'm getting that Windows will screw up my raid 0. All my media (movies and archives files) is stored on there and I don't want to lose it. Are there any cards which u consider to be good in the 300 CAD range?

 

in case of MOBO failure and OS screw up its my assumption I can just install a new MOBO and OS and the raid will be automatically detected as long as I have the raid card installed and the drives are connected to it?

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 hours ago, CoinDuckling369 said:

I advise using an raid controller,

I found one not to expensive at Newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124093&cm_re=raid_controller-_-16-124-093-_-Product

Im looking now for point 3

 

Don't use that. Its just software raid its using. 

 

If you buying a raid card, get one with its own cpu, like the lsi ones.

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 hours ago, Excal13 said:

The more I keep reading about fake raid, the more paranoid I'm getting that Windows will screw up my raid 0. All my media (movies and archives files) is stored on there and I don't want to lose it. Are there any cards which u consider to be good in the 300 CAD range?

Are you using storage spaces. Id personally use storage spaces over most hardware raid. Its much more flexable and also have checksumming like zfs if you enable refs.

 

10 hours ago, Excal13 said:

n case of MOBO failure and OS screw up its my assumption I can just install a new MOBO and OS and the raid will be automatically detected as long as I have the raid card installed and the drives are connected to it?

Yep, also software raid will do this aswell.

[leadeater]

If you really want to use a parity array in Windows then you need a hardware RAID card with cache module and the battery unit. First I would suggest just using a 3 disk Storage Spaces mirror array since you won't need to buy a RAID card and has nice things @Electronics Wizardy already pointed out, you do get less usable space though but you can use the saved money on more disks.