Raid 0 partitioning?

davb

fwor wrote: »

It's a bit difficult to tell, but the general rule is that consumer-grade PCs with onboard (i.e. chipset on the motherboard) RAID controllers are almost always fakeRAID.

Full hardware RAID will almost always require a separate controller card unless it's a server-grade machine. And note that even if you have a separate card, it may still be software RAID (proper RAID controller cards are the expensive ones...).

From the spec of the PC it is most likely to be Intel Matrix RAID as it has an Intel P965 Express Chipset, with I think an ICH8R controller.

It's not as good as a dedicated RAID card, but it does the job with RAID 1 - I wouldn't trust it with RAID 0 though.

RobTang

Personally I have been running fakeraid raid-0 (os drive) for my last 2-3 machines and havn't had a problem with it. the extra write speed it nice till I can afford a few SSDs

but I do take automated images regularly and I dont store anything I can't afford to loose on the OS drive.

Although I do agree it does add risk of failure.

I have had to recover from a fakeraid raid-1, it never rebuild the other mirror properly but did allow me to image the drive (very slowly) and save everything.

fwor

RobTang wrote: »

I have had to recover from a fakeraid raid-1, it never rebuild the other mirror properly but did allow me to image the drive (very slowly) and save everything.

My experience too - fortunately only under test conditions. It convinced me not to rely on a cheap RAID1 solution and to stick to cloning for backups instead.

Naf

RAID IS A COMPLETELY POINTLESS SETUP FOR 99% OF HOME USERS COMPUTERS!!!
Just do what fwor said (granted that might mean a re-install) and partition off one drive for the 80G you want, use the rest as storage. Image it if you're that worried about losing data. I run a 70G drive for my OS & programs, with 2x 1TB drives for storage. Because I keep tabs on the state of the drives (regular scans, and watch BIOS on reboot for early failure warnings) I have no worries about system failure.

RobTang

Naf wrote: »

RAID IS A COMPLETELY POINTLESS SETUP FOR 99% OF HOME USERS COMPUTERS!!!
Just do what fwor said (granted that might mean a re-install) and partition off one drive for the 80G you want, use the rest as storage. Image it if you're that worried about losing data. I run a 70G drive for my OS & programs, with 2x 1TB drives for storage. Because I keep tabs on the state of the drives (regular scans, and watch BIOS on reboot for early failure warnings) I have no worries about system failure.

Raid-0 yes.

but all others I would have to disagree, its a luxury yes but people do store a lot data which extreamly valuable to them and its never pointless to mitagate some of the risk of loosing that data, of which raid should be a part of the solution.

oh and if your bios is warning you about hdd and its not a false positive it really is too late, ive had quite a few drives fail on me and you can only really save a few gig before you have to call recovery specalists.

fwor

Naf wrote: »

Because I keep tabs on the state of the drives (regular scans, and watch BIOS on reboot for early failure warnings) I have no worries about system failure.

I know from recent personal experience that you don't always get any warning at all.

I have here a less than 4 year old Western Digital WD5000AAKS which failed while I was using it 2 weeks ago. No SMART tripped warnings (Linux monitors SMART in real time) - one minute it was working, the next... whirr, click click, whirr, click click, etc., and it was gone.

I was lucky to have cloned it to an identical drive (soon to be retired) only 2 weeks earlier - my previous backup was over four months old!

Naf

RobTang wrote: »

Raid-0 yes.

but all others I would have to disagree, its a luxury yes but people do store a lot data which extreamly valuable to them and its never pointless to mitagate some of the risk of loosing that data, of which raid should be a part of the solution.

oh and if your bios is warning you about hdd and its not a false positive it really is too late, ive had quite a few drives fail on me and you can only really save a few gig before you have to call recovery specalists.

Striping I can understand in some circumstances, and maybe my 99% was over enthusiastic. But as a general rule, your average person's home computer has little need of a RAID. For their purposes better to have a regular backup of specified areas scheduled. A big problem is understanding what you've got and maintenance. Even if your average user has a RAID, what does happen when one drive fails; how far behind might the other be? Probably not far, and not understanding what they have they're likely to ignore warnings that the first drive has gone because 'it was still running fine' 'till the second goes too. A separate drive, smaller as OS and programs don't need to be stored, that collates and backs up user data regularly is a better solution. I'm not advocating NO RAID=NO BACKUP/FAILSAFE, but the added hassle it puts on the user when they don't have the first clue can just cause more problems than it insures against.

prowla

There is almost never a case for using RAID 0 (striping); it is increasing the likelihood of failure, and should not show huge performance gains for just 2 disks in the set.

Naf

*ahem... oops. Meant mirroring. Too busy with kids lol.

BarGin

Can anyone suggest how I go about removing the raid implementation please?