Onboard MB Raid - Just don't do it..

[jbeckva]

So I thought with all the extra HD's I had acquired recently that I would turn on my motherboard's RAID feature. I have four HD's, 2 that are 1TB and another 2 that are 320G. So for the 1st two I "mirrored" them, which is when RAID takes two disks and keeps a complete copy of the data sync'd between the two,( so if one fails....). The last 2 I did a "stripe" which is basically splits the data between the two drives - theory behind that is it should take half as long to read/write since each disk has half of the "task".

I even made a slipstream windows 7 install that included the RAID drivers, so that I can do a full OS install on the raid "array" (that worked GREAT btw... ).

But... and this is probably why I did this before, and then promptly UNDID it, the so-called RAID I have isn't really a hardware-based process. Instead of a "proper" RAID controller that would normally do the needed processing outside and unknown, this (and probably most "consumer" level RAID-capable motherboards) type of RAID uses the main CPU for it's processing. The end result is any time I am doing anything halfway disk intensive (yeah, even listening to a FLAC or two), I get a good amount of CPU drain. Kills me... bummer..

Soooo... now the trick is to un-do it all. Which really IS a trick because there's no way to get rid of the RAID arrays without losing the data - at least with my motherboard there is not.

I gotta plan tho... I still have a few more HD's spare that can get me outta this mess. Then I'll use one or two for backup purposes and keep my backups manual.

 

[Web Police]

Hmm I use raid 0 on both of my mobo's and have never experienced this. I am using Nvidia Nforce raid controllers.

As for undoing it, you should be able to clone your raid setup to a single drive using any of the popular disk cloning softwares. I have done this many times. I have backup drives of both my raid setups and they are single drives and bootable as that is the first thing I check.

 

[jbeckva]

Which nVidia MB do you have? They may have improved it on later versions. For reference, I have a 650i. Also .. I am using Raid 1 ... could be that Raid 1 blows chunks while 0 is ok.

 

[Web Police]

My boards are much older than yours. I am still using Socket 939 cpu's. Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboards. I have never tried Raid 1 on them as I have need for speed but no need for mirroring capabilities.

 

[jbeckva]

ps.. what are you using for cloning? Acronis? (man, I gotta get me that... )

 

[jbeckva]

My boards are much older than yours. I am still using Socket 939 cpu's. Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboards. I have never tried Raid 1 on them as I have need for speed but no need for mirroring capabilities.

Not by much... I think I bought that in 2006'ish or so. Can't go higher than the 65nm dies for Intel 775's. Kinda blows because now that I am thinking of going to quad cores, Intel discontinued the series' that was quad and 65nm. Need to go to another MB at least, and maybe might flip back over to AMD.

 

[Web Police]

Yes, I have been using Acronis in the last year or two. I think you can download a fully functional copy to use for 30 day from their website. I used to just use their evaluation copies, but one time the egg had the software on special for $19.99 so I bought a copy.

 

[jbeckva]

Well I paid around 50 for the license (Acronis Disk Director 11), and that had to have been one of the best 50 bucks spent. Took about 3 hours to get data moved around and get rid of the RAID, but it's done. Yeah.. big difference ... speed is back up where I need it to be. I did have a fright tho when I couldn't boot, but a quick 3 minute job with the win 7 install/repair CD fixed that.

For grins, I also just used Win 7's software mirroring and tested that, and believe it or not even that does better than the motherboard native RAID stuff.

Now.. what the heck do I do with 2+ TB's of free space? (hmmm... time to make some .flacs... )

 

[Web Police]

Good you got the job done. I have been able to clone raid drives to a single drive and back again without boot problems. The only time I have had issues is when making a backup image of the drive. When restoring the backup image to a raid setup I have had to use the recovery console to fix the boot sector.

I use the clone disk option for a few of the computers I service for family members. When they hose their drives up real bad I can clone them back to service in short order.


I have four 1 tb drives and a ton of 500 and 250 gb drives for backing up music and movies.

 

[laatsch55]

Laatsch wandering around in circles muttering wtf, wtf, wtf.........................