Switch my OS to raided hard drives?

[KuJoe]

Avoid FakeRAID at all costs. If you need to use RAID get either a hardware RAID controller or use software RAID. NEVER USE ONBOARD RAID IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR DATA!

[SSD Sean]

3 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Avoid FakeRAID at all costs. If you need to use RAID get either a hardware RAID controller or use software RAID. NEVER USE ONBOARD RAID IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR DATA!

Why? As long as you back up regularly you will have absolutely nothing to worry about. And if you want more security throw together a RAID 10 too. All fine with onboard firmware/CPU RAID. No need for a RAID card unless you are working with raid 5,6,50,60

[KuJoe]

9 minutes ago, SSD Sean said:

Why? As long as you back up regularly you will have absolutely nothing to worry about. And if you want more security throw together a RAID 10 too. All fine with onboard firmware/CPU RAID. No need for a RAID card unless you are working with raid 5,6,50,60

In my experience these are the issues I've run into:

1. The inability to import an array into a new motherboard if the original dies (even something like a SATA port going bad will force you to rebuild your array or continue to run in a degraded state).
2. The inability to expand/convert/manage an array once it is built.
3. Offloading the processing to the CPU (just like software RAID only without the other benefits software RAID provides).
4. Depending on the RAID controller there's a lot of stability errors (i.e. needing to reboot a few times to get both drives to show up).

In most cases you're better off with software RAID than using the onboard RAID controller. Hardware RAID is better for parity-based RAIDs because the parity calculation is done in hardware but I still prefer RAID10 on hardware RAID personally (even though I've been moving to RAID50 for better redundancy).

 

The only reason to use onboard RAID is when you don't have any other option, it's basically emulated software RAID without any of the benefits that software like mdadm can offer. 

 

EDIT: And also, regardless of RAID or not backups are an entirely different topic. I can talk about backups for days but I never include RAID in the discussion because hardware redundancy is not a backup solution. Always keep local and off-site backups no matter what your hardware setup looks like.

[_Grid21]

11 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

My one experience with it was it wan't as easy to use and it couldn't handle cloning more than two or three partitions. Besides, why pay for a program when there is a free one that does just as well, if not better.

Do you know of a good tutorial video that explains how to use the imagining and cloning features?

[SSD Sean]

1. Depends on the chipsets. It’s possible. Doesn’t really matter tho with a good backup routine. 

2. Again, depends on chipset. Doesn’t matter for OP. 

3. Doesn’t really matter for RAID 0,1, and 10. Doesn’t matter for OP. 

4. Depends on chipset. I’m a PC tech. I have dealt with hundreds of different systems this past year alone. I’ve not had many issues with firmware RAID for the past 9 years on intel systems nor that many in AMD,  but to be fair I don’t deal with RAID on AMD systems much.

 

 

For cloning tutorial. It’s really easy. There’s hundreds of guides via google/YouTube.

This written guide goes over the how to fairly well for Macrium Reflect: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.windowscentral.com/how-clone-your-pcs-hard-drive-macrium-reflect%3famp

 

Basically:

1. Install new drive

2. Install and launch cloning software

3. Click system clone or disk clone

4. If there is an align for SSD option click it

5. Clone/image/backup

6. If cloning OS to new drive, then shutdown when complete and set boot drive to new one in your UEFI/BIOS.

 

 

AOMEI Backupper is a good option too. I use it weekly for work along side acronis true image HD.