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Well... my gaming computer has been running two 500 GB, 7200 rpm drives in RAID 0 config for a year or more now. With drives being relatively inexpensive and me thinking in a more cautious way than I did when I put the system together. I'm thinking that I should update my gaming rig so it is running RAID 5 config instead of RAID 0. Want to maintain good performance, but made the "R" in RAID actually mean something by having redunant drives so if one hard drive fails I'm not immediately screwed.

I've bought two more 500 GB, 7200 rpm drives. They aren't quite identical to my existing ones, but they are same size, rpm, and even manufacturer so I trust that they will work fine in RAID 5 with the old ones. Next, I've just finished a system (image) backup of my entire gaming rig using the backup software that came with my Seagate Black Armor 400/420 Network Attached Storage (NAS) device.

Now I'm sitting here wondering what the school of hard knocks is about to teach me when I try to add the two drives and reconfigure my RAID. Some areas of concern that I probably need to do more research on are:

• My "Asus P6T SE X58 DDR3" supports RAID, but I haven't yet figured out if it is "real" RAID controller or "fakeraid".
• If it is fakeraid (which lets the CPU do most of the RAID overhead/work) should I get a "real" RAID expansion card?
• Which RAID controller would you get if you were ordering from Memory Express RAID cards
• I don't *think* I'll have a problem resotring a backup image made from a 2-drive RAID 0 config when I have a 4-drive RAID 5 config, but I'm not 100% sure that this will work. Never done it before.

- Kinda wondering if instead of restoring from the backup that maybe I should just go with fresh reinstall of everything. Means I'll have lots of things I want to make note of first, like....

• export my registry to have a saved copy just in case.
• Make sure I have all the CD-keys that I need/want.
• ftp username/passwords for various sites (including WGO)
• Teamspeak/Ventrilo server details for rarely visited servers (EWB, OSS, WCK, etc...)
• jot down static ip and host table info
• probably a dozen other things I'll forget but wished I had saved

Why am I writing..... well... just in case any of you good folks can give me some things to watch out for, plan for, or to just plain avoid..... it would be appreciated. But.... reply fast. I'm likely to start messing with this really really soon (like perhaps tonight...or at least this week sometime).

I would've gone with the 10k rpm drives, but w/e
As far as backing up and whatnot, can't you just image the drive (I can't suggest any programs) and drop it on the new system?

haasd0gg wrote:I would've gone with the 10k rpm drives, but w/e
As far as backing up and whatnot, can't you just image the drive (I can't suggest any programs) and drop it on the new system?

Yeah... I *THINK* an image backup will restore even if the drive config is different. Never done it before though... Already go the backup program and have made the backup image. About to launch into the rest of it...

Imaging the drive will not work as it will break what ever RAID you put in unless it is hardware raid. Then it is 50/50 if you have problems. Your best bet is to use the built in backup with the OS. You want to do a backup with verify too two different locations. (very important, don't get burned like me)... Build your array, do a generic install of the OS and then do a restore. Be ready to deal with any boot issues as they come up from time to time.

Almost all consumer MB are software RAID only, including yours. You will suffer a performance hit without a raid controller. Any raid controller from LSI/3Ware, Adaptec, or Promise will do. I have used them all and had good results across the board with a few minor exceptions. Personally I went with a SSD drive instead. It is around the same price as the raid card. Speed wise they are on par with some of the fastest servers I got. Plus it is fun to go from a cold start to making this post in under 7 seconds.

If the hubby has enough time tonight after work I'll have him reply to this.... He deals with this stuff every day. My only concern is performance. I recommend you do an image just incase you find your performance unsatisfactory you can just wipe and re-image back to RAID 0.

toad wrote:Imaging the drive will not work as it will break what ever RAID you put in unless it is hardware raid.

Are you sure about that? This is something I was wondering about.... But everything I've read so far kinda suggests that you can use backup software just fine to make an "image" of a RAID volume and restore it to another volume even if that other volume is non-RAID or a different RAID config. The way I *THINK* it works is that the "image" really isn't a bit-level hardware-disk specific "image". Rather I am under the impression that it is really called an "image" because it really is more of a *full* backup of everything on your storage volume and not just selected files.

I wasn't too sure about this myself though. There is some possibility that an image/backup could be working differently than what I thought. You posts seems to suggest that is the case, but your post is the first time I've read something that suggests it probably won't work. So... I guess I'm fishing for more info on this.

For what it's worth, I've already used my NAS device and backup software that came with it to make a backup "image" of my system. I've added the drives inside the case and wired it all up. Have deleted the previous RAID 0 array of two disks and created a new RAID 5 array with four disks (two old, and two new). Instead of restoring my full-backup, I have (so far) just reinstalled Win7 as a fresh install. I've accessed a few specific files from that saved backup "image" already but haven't restored the whole thing.

Once I get a few more drivers and core programs put back onto the thing, I'll make another full-backup and then I guess I'll kinda play with it and see if I can tell which way the performance went. I've added two new drives so that splits file read/write across an extra drive which should be better. However, RAID 5 writes require extra overhead so that might make it worse performance (although more reliable).

Almost all consumer MB are software RAID only, including yours. You will suffer a performance hit without a raid controller. Any raid controller from LSI/3Ware, Adaptec, or Promise will do. I have used them all and had good results across the board with a few minor exceptions. Personally I went with a SSD drive instead. It is around the same price as the raid card. Speed wise they are on par with some of the fastest servers I got. Plus it is fun to go from a cold start to making this post in under 7 seconds.

yeah, the moderator over in the ASUS (my motherboard is ASUS) kinda confirmed that the RAID I have is software (aka fakeraid) and I'd get better performance with a hardware RAID card in an expansion slot. Not sure if I am going to do that or not. I'll give my current hardware and try and see. I thought sorta briefly about SSDs but my private little birdie that sits on my shoulder and whispers IT advice too me keeps saying "Fly... be an early adopter on stuff, but not SSDs" Besides the cost of getting all your storage needs in SSD would be really high and I'm not to thrilled about setting up a mix of SSD boot drive with spinning-drives for the megastorage needs. Not sure my reasoning there is logical, but I'm kinda avoiding SSDs for now....


So.... I'm well into this now. I still haven't tried a "full" backup and restore when the RAID config changes but I *think* it would work. I also haven't had a chance to see if I can tell a difference in performance but I'll try to do that. So far nothing has jumped up and bit me in the butt.... but I haven't resinalled a lot of programs yet so I don't know what CD-key or setting that I am missing yet....

NiteRunner81 wrote:If the hubby has enough time tonight after work I'll have him reply to this.... He deals with this stuff every day. My only concern is performance. I recommend you do an image just incase you find your performance unsatisfactory you can just wipe and re-image back to RAID 0.

I'll be curious as to what his take on it is. Assuming the backup/restore stuff works (as it seems to be so far), I think you are right. It looks like I could try this RAID 5 a while and if I decide there is some performance drag that I don't want I have the option to either live on the edge again with a 4-disk RAID 0 and/or get a hardware RAID controller.

Imaging a drive is making a sector by sector clone, a full backup is just copying the data. Most “imaging” solutions I have looked at are hacked up linux solutions. I have done the whole imaging the drive and third party backups with hardware RAID arrays. In theory they should work! In reality it was such a pain in the arse that I wouldn’t recommend it. The biggest problem is making the cloning solution aware of the hardware raid card, via drivers. After a doing a few server clones I started using the built in backup as it is much easier to handle. Every manufacture makes drivers for Windows so hardware problems go away. So many people use the built in backup so finding solutions to your problems become easier. That and I am inherently lazy so I always go the easiest route. I must confess that I come from the server world, so I don’t stay up on the latest consumer backup solutions. There may be some wiz-bang new solution that solves it all that I am not aware of. Considering you are using a software array most solutions recognize it so you should have problems.

On a side note if you redoing your rig why don't you load up your apps and manually move your data. Do a little house cleaning before you get kicking again?

RAID 5 sucks on writes because of the parity calculations required. If you have UPS attached to your rig enable write caching to speed things up. Hardware raid cards have cache built into the boards but still require backup power. If you lose power while writes are being cached weird problems can crop up from time to time.

I have used SSD drives for my boot partition for months now and love them. As for space I wouldn’t worry about trying to get SSD sized out to match what you have now. If you look at your data the majority can be store on another drive besides the C: drive. For me personally I have my default OS loaded, my games, and my work apps (like MS Office and such) on the SSD. The rest is on my 3TB drive. You can repoint your personal folders to the other drive so it will all appear seamless to you. I was like you and hesitant but now I love them!!!! Loading games takes seconds now it is great!!

4 disk raid 0 is asking for trouble, make you have a solid backup plan….

Raid is soooo 2002.......