Intel Software Raid 1

[Jesse]

Hello,

After looking at a couple of the raid threads I know that most folks here do not favor software based raid. I am not yet ready to invest in a controller card and the drives to set up an array for my video and music files but I would like to set up a raid 1 array for my os and app files. My intel mobo (865PERL) has provisions for "intel softraid" using sata drives. I am hoping someone here on the forum may have experience with this particular solution, or a similar one, and can let me know how well it works or does'nt work.

My other option would be to just have ghost image the boot drive from time to time. While this could certainly be a lifesaver, I would prefer the added convinience that a raid 1 array would offer.

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks,

Jesse

[WLNE-TV]

Hey Jesse,

I am not at all a fan of software RAID solutions, however, I have used the native (but hidden) capability of XP Pro to create a software RAID 5 set (which is where we store our video files on our sage server). When I was designing a Sage system for a friend for home use, I found a hardware SATA RAID controller for $80 on New Egg. I set up a RAID 5 set for him with 4 SATA 250GB Drives, giving him a 750GB of space with parity to hold his video files. This hardware RAID set uses about 10% less system resources to perform the same function of our system at work.

If you do decide to go with a software RAID 1 solution, you may experience a noticable performance decrease. I don't think the decrease would be drastic, but I am positive that during heavy write periods (saving files or copying files) you will see a difference. I would highly recommend picking up an inexpensive hardware RAID card to do this. Almost all of the SATA controllers our there support hardware RAID 0 and 1. (If you are looking to expand in the future, I would check out the Highpoint 1640 RocketRAID card. It supports RAID 0/1/5 and includes cables and headers for 4 SATA drives.

Hope this helps.
Jt

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Jesse

I would like to set up a raid 1 array for my os and app files. My intel mobo (865PERL) has provisions for "intel softraid" using sata drives.

Waste of time IMO, you're better off just creating images (backups) of your OS drive onto the second drive. Ideally, in a removeable enclosure. That protects you from nearly everything, in addition to drive failure.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by WLNE-TV

Hey Jesse,

I am not at all a fan of software RAID solutions, however, I have used the native (but hidden) capability of XP Pro to create a software RAID 5 set (which is where we store our video files on our sage server). When I was designing a Sage system for a friend for home use, I found a hardware SATA RAID controller for $80 on New Egg. I set up a RAID 5 set for him with 4 SATA 250GB Drives, giving him a 750GB of space with parity to hold his video files. This hardware RAID set uses about 10% less system resources to perform the same function of our system at work.

You can NOT buy a hardware RAID card for $80. I assume you're talking the Highpoint? It is NOT, I repeat NOT, a hardware RAID card, it impliments it's RAID functionality at the driver level, no better than software RAID IMO.

With a true HW RAID card, you see ~0% CPU usage when reading or writing.

If you do decide to go with a software RAID 1 solution, you may experience a noticable performance decrease. I don't think the decrease would be drastic, but I am positive that during heavy write periods (saving files or copying files) you will see a difference.

I doubt he'd see much of a hit, RAID-1 is easy, it's RAID-5 where the parity calculations come in that you see a hit.

I would highly recommend picking up an inexpensive hardware RAID card to do this. Almost all of the SATA controllers our there support hardware RAID 0 and 1. (If you are looking to expand in the future, I would check out the Highpoint 1640 RocketRAID card. It supports RAID 0/1/5 and includes cables and headers for 4 SATA drives.

Hope this helps.
Jt

Personally that's the last thing I'd do. Highpoint does not make quality cards, they make cards for the tweaker market where RAID-5 is something "cool". If you want a good card, you're going to have to go to something like 3ware, Areca, Adaptec (not their cheap stuff). Those are enterprise cards, built for 100% uptime.

[korben_dallas]

Jesse,

I have an Intel D875PBZ and have been running two 80GB SATA drives in Raid 1 mirror using Intel Application Accelerator Raid Edition for over a year & half now. It is rock solid stable and extremely fast. Particularly when I am playing online games, I am always in the first 5 people to load the map and get into the game. I haven't had either drive fail yet, but did have the secondary drive get out of sync once. So I unplugged it, replugged it, and did a hot rebuild. Worked perfectly. I have my SageTV videos on an EIDE drive of their own, but I have no doubt you could run the OS & videos on the same Raid set with no problems.

Hardware Raid is for guys with way too much money and time to spend on their PC's. :P

[dvd_maniac]

I guess I went somewhere in the middle and bought a Promise sx4060 for 174.00 on Newegg. I store all my recordings and OS and do all my dvd encoding on it. So I use it alot... and even though it is not 100% Hardware, it doesn't seem to slow my system down. In fact my encodes are faster than when I was doing them in raid-1 with the on-board SATA promise controller on the P4C800 E-Deluxe from Asus

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Waste of time IMO, you're better off just creating images (backups) of your OS drive onto the second drive. Ideally, in a removeable enclosure. That protects you from nearly everything, in addition to drive failure.

I imagine that you are speaking in the specific case of an HTPC (given that this is an HTPC forum ...

But, just for kicks, I want to point out that RAID 1 may not always be a waste of time. For example, I spent considerable time getting software RAID 1 to boot on my Linux-based email server. This will allow me to enjoy my vacation in Europe instead of living in fear that my friends and family will suddenly be without their email if one of the drives fails. I have RAID 1 (on an Areca) for the boot volume on my file server, as well. I happen to think RAID 1 is well worth the time on servers.

Do I wish I had RAID 1 on my Sage server? Yes -- the next time I rebuild it, I'm going to do so.
Do care about it on my (client) HTPCs? No. For clients I would agree that periodic imaging is the way to go.

[stanger89]

Probably more that I think RAID is, in general, a bad idea. It has no place in most PCs, in most circumstances. You need to have a good reasons to go RAID. Like an email server that others depend on (RAID-1), a huge media server (RAID-5), a video editing machine (RAID-0).

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Probably more that I think RAID is, in general, a bad idea. It has no place in most PCs, in most circumstances. You need to have a good reasons to go RAID.

Granted if Windows gets corrupted, no amount of fault tolerance will save you. But I really enjoy the piece of mind from knowing that a hard drive failure won't cause me to lose many irreplaceable digital pictures, mp3's, audio projects, or my SageTV configuration and history.

Motherboard-level RAID is very common now, and I think it is a good feature to take advantage of.. especially as affordable as large drives are these days.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

Granted if Windows gets corrupted, no amount of fault tolerance will save you. But I really enjoy the piece of mind from knowing that a hard drive failure won't cause me to lose many irreplaceable digital pictures, mp3's, audio projects, or my SageTV configuration and history.

That's what backups are for

[blade]

Whether you have Raid or not, it's still important to make regular backups of important data. Raid isn't a substitution for regular backups. As has already been said, if windows gets corrupted it may affect all of the drives in the array. Making the redundancy useless. If I'm already making images of my boot drive, backing up mp3's, and archived videos I see little benefit in adding a Raid setup for a non-mission critical PC such as a Sage Server.

Let's say I have (2) 250 gig drives. If one fails I run the risk of losing 250 gigs worth of recordings. In a Raid setup the failure or corruption of 1 disk might not cause any data loss or it could result in the loss of all 500 gigs depending upon the Raid setup you're using and the type of failure. The more drives you have that are dependent upon one another the greater the probability of a major failure. Raid has benefits but it also has significant drawbacks.

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by blade

Whether you have Raid or not, it's still important to make regular backups of important data. Raid isn't a substitution for regular backups. As has already been said, if windows gets corrupted it may affect all of the drives in the array. Making the redundancy useless. If I'm already making images of my boot drive, backing up mp3's, and archived videos I see little benefit in adding a Raid setup for a non-mission critical PC such as a Sage Server...Raid has benefits but it also has significant drawbacks.

My experience with Windows XP Professional is that it has been the most stable version of Windows yet. And I have successfully used System Restore several times when something got botched. Yes, you should do regular backups. But if you are doing very frequent backups, you could probaby save the money you are spending on the additional hard drive space or dvd/tape media and just use Raid.

As for what is non-mission critical, that would highly depend on the person and the usage. I have rebuilt my PC a few times. It takes on the order of 50+ hours, sitting in front of the PC downloading, installing, and configuring programs. 50 hours is essentially a work week, and my free time is more valuable to me than that.

A few hundred dollars for a motherboard and extra hard drive, and you have a Raid 1 mirror setup. Add to that XP system restore and an occasional backup, and you have a very stable, fault-tolerant system.

[WLNE-TV]

Originally Posted by blade

Whether you have Raid or not, it's still important to make regular backups of important data. Raid isn't a substitution for regular backups. As has already been said, if windows gets corrupted it may affect all of the drives in the array. Making the redundancy useless. If I'm already making images of my boot drive, backing up mp3's, and archived videos I see little benefit in adding a Raid setup for a non-mission critical PC such as a Sage Server.

Let's say I have (2) 250 gig drives. If one fails I run the risk of losing 250 gigs worth of recordings. In a Raid setup the failure or corruption of 1 disk might not cause any data loss or it could result in the loss of all 500 gigs depending upon the Raid setup you're using and the type of failure. The more drives you have that are dependent upon one another the greater the probability of a major failure. Raid has benefits but it also has significant drawbacks.

Backups are definitly important, depending on what it is you ae backing up. I would never wasted the time or the energy making an image of my Windows Installation, because I could have it reinstalled PDQ. My data is never saved on my OS partition, and never even on the same HD if I can help it.

I almost always use a split backplane RAID 1/5 for mission critical servers. The OS Partition is usually contained on a RAID 1 set of 36GB drives, and data is normally placed on a RAID 5 set of 3-4 large drives. That gives me enough piece of mind, knowing that one hard drive failing on either RAID set will not result in data loss. It also is comforting to know that if Windows does become corrupt, my data is still safe on the RAID 5 set.

I have never used RAID 0 (striping) unless I was striping between 2 RAID 5 sets (like on my file server, 2 hardware RAID 5 sets using 8 250GB drives each, striped using Windows RAID 0, gives me 3.5TB available and a R/W performace boost over two separate raid sets). RAID 0 is too risky for my tastes, even at home.

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by WLNE-TV

RAID 0 is too risky for my tastes, even at home.

I've definitely never had much success with striping myself.

[blade]

But if you are doing very frequent backups, you could probaby save the money you are spending on the additional hard drive space or dvd/tape media and just use Raid.

How would using Raid instead of backing up to an additional hard drive save money? Regular backups won't require anymore space than mirroring the entire drive. If anything mirroring with a Raid setup would require more drive space. Even with mirroring the drive, you'll still need some space to store your backups.

As for what is non-mission critical, that would highly depend on the person and the usage. I have rebuilt my PC a few times. It takes on the order of 50+ hours, sitting in front of the PC downloading, installing, and configuring programs. 50 hours is essentially a work week, and my free time is more valuable to me than that.

An occasional drive image solves the problem of spending 50+ hours reinstalling your software.

I agree that the user determines what is mission critical. The best thing about PC's, we can customize them and set things up as we each see fit.

Personally I don't like for my backups to be located in the same box as the originals. I perfer a networked drive, up until recently I had a Samba server that was used exclusively for storing backups of all my critical files. I just feel more secure having copies of everything I need in a location that's not sharing the same hardware as the originals. Of course that's just my personal preferrence.

The biggest benefit I see with Raid 1 is in the event of a drive failure you can avoid downtime. However the minimal amount of downtime I would experience wouldn't be worth the cost of a Raid 1 setup IMO. Of course for others it may be worth it. It all depends upon personal preferrence.

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by blade

An occasional drive image solves the problem of spending 50+ hours reinstalling your software.

Oh I have years of experience with (Norton) Ghost. Enough to know that it doesn't always work the way you want it to. Besides, I'd have to image my computer every week to have a useable image.. and I'm not even certain an imaging program would recognize the SATA drives on the RAID 1 set.

Almost any new motherboard now comes with RAID. Heck, some of them even come with matrix raid where you can take multiple drives, partition them, and have mixed Raid sets across the same drives. That's very cool!

Anywho, Jesse asked about Intel motherboard RAID, which I've used for a long time now, and it gets my thumbs up approval. I have XP, all my programs and games, and SageTV installed on the RAID 1 mirror, and all my SageTV videos on an EIDE drive. When I do my occasional backup, that goes onto the EIDE drive as well.

Actually, I don't really see why so many ppl around here are concerned about losing their SageTV recordings. I'd be much much more upset if I lost my Wiz.bin history.

[blade]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

Actually, I don't really see why so many ppl around here are concerned about losing their SageTV recordings. I'd be much much more upset if I lost my Wiz.bin history.

Agreed, I don't have any of my recordings backed up. The way I look at it is Sage will eventually record them all again if they're lost. I do understand why people wouldn't want to lose shows they've archived but unwatched recordings don't concern me.

[Lucas]

Same here. I don't do RAID or backups for video files.
The important stuff can be burned to DVD for offline storage and the others are usually show again at some time on some channel or can be gotten at a Video Club if one really wants to see a movie again.

I used to have a RAID 1 array for the boot partition and my music/personal document data.
However, recently I broke the RAID 1 array and used the extra 80Gb Disk to store images of the 2 partitions above using Acronis True Image with scheduled frequent backups.

Once a week I also burn a copy of the boot partition to DVD for off-site(office) keeping.

The music collection doesn't change very often so a backup to DVD once every 3-4 months keeps me comfortable.

[silkshadow]

As has already been said, if windows gets corrupted it may affect all of the drives in the array. Making the redundancy useless. If I'm already making images of my boot drive, backing up mp3's, and archived videos I see little benefit in adding a Raid setup for a non-mission critical PC such as a Sage Server.

I don't understand this. How can a Windows OS corruption mess with your MP3 files and such?

Backing up, or raiding your OS partition is a waste of time and resources. If that gets messed up just reinstall. My windows XP partitions gets re-installed every few months because of accumulated junk. Its always better to start from scratch than to use an image. Just make sure the stuff on your OS partition are things you don't care about. For ease of use, TweakUI has a nice little app to move folders such as "my documents" to other locations. Just use that to move all your important data folders to another partion. Install Sage and Meedio and whatnot that you need to keep config files for also on a partition other than your OS'. For speed, spend some time configuring a Windows slipstreamed DVD with all the apps you usually install on it. When its time to do a re-install, spend ~15 minutes updating it, reburn, format the OS partition, stick the DVD in your drive and go have dinner. When you get back, everything is up and running. Been using a DVD such as this for the last 6 months and, man, its a dream come true. Almost like those 'self-healing' servers.

As for software raid, well its not as reliable as a good hardware raid card. However, let me stress 'good' there because I would rather entrust my data to a host controller like broadcom's over a low-end so-called hardware raid controller card. Anyway, I'm about to entrust alot of my data to a raid 5 sata Sillicon Image host controller due to budget contraints and lack of alternatives. So, for home use, I don't see anything bad in using software raid. I was even using generic Promise-based pata raid host controllers for raid 1, JOB and such for over a year. Not one problem till the whole server keeled over on me (nothing to do with the raid controllers). The thing with host controlers is that they are resource intensive. IMO the big difference between these and a hardware solution, and let me stress: for home use, is performance. Thats it.

[blade]

Originally Posted by silkshadow

I don't understand this. How can a Windows OS corruption mess with your MP3 files and such?

That's not what I said. This is what I said:

As has already been said, if windows gets corrupted it may affect all of the drives in the array. Making the redundancy useless.

If you're mirroring your boot drive and say your wiz.bin file or sage properties gets corrupted or changed somehow wouldn't the change be mirrored on the other drive making both copies faulty?

Then I said:

If I'm already making images of my boot drive, backing up mp3's, and archived videos I see little benefit in adding a Raid setup for a non-mission critical PC such as a Sage Server.

If I'm already backing up everything of importance then I don't see the need to mirror everything.