Well, this is irritating - HDD/RAID

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

So I blew one of my HDDs 2 days ago.  Ok so not a huge deal, can be fixed, right?  So the model I have is out of production and is not around anymore.  Whats my best move here?  I don't wanna buy a bunch of new drives right now.  Any way I can match a close enough drive and have it still work in RAID or is it critical to have the exact same drives accross the board.  I'm fairly certain I can find a similar drive thats bigger than my current one with the same cache, RPM, interface, etc.

[k0ala]

Yes, it's important to have a drive that meets the compatibility list (ie: tested and guaranteed) if you cannot get an identical matched drive.
I've gotten good at looking this stuff up.
Please provide the thread with:
Make and model # of your RAID card
Make and model # of existing drives

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822136592

[Kirby]

$50 says he's not using a RAID card and is just using the shoddy onboard RAID feature.



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822136793

This is your replacement drive. It's just a newer revision of the one you have now.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Eh onboard/software raid works well enough so long as you're not doing something like  RAID 5 or 10.  I'm only doing RAID 1 just for critical failure's sake.  IE what happened.  And thanks Kirby, I figured that was the case, I've just never needed to swap for rebuild before.

[Kirby]

I'm curious, when you get your replacement drive in and the array is rebuiltmirrored, could you run atto disk benchmark on it and post a pic of the results?

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Sure.  Though I can only imagine that it's gonna look something like slower than a single drive in non-raid, slower than anything running as a striped array, etc.

*edit*

Also, for anyone thinking about doing SW RAID, be aware that there's a higher risk of glitching and having that getting propagated and fucking your install.  AKA why RAID, esp software RAID is NOT a backup solution.  Actually what I'd like to do but don't wanna spend the $ for is to have a RAID 5 with another drive to write clonezilla images onto, but my MOBO doesn't support having a raid along with one disk not in raid so I'd have to get a HW setup and yeah, not buying 3 new drives and a raid card.

[Kirby]

Karrde link=topic=6255.msg239548#msg239548 date=1329860054]
Sure.  Though I can only imagine that it's gonna look something like slower than a single drive in non-raid, slower than anything running as a striped array, etc.

Not all controllers do it, but some will read data off different drives simultaneously to increase read speeds.

Unless you're using an abacus for a RAID controller, your (read) performance will be greater than that of a standalone drive.


The reason I ask is because the drive I linked also happens to be my C:\ drive, and I'm using O&O's defrag program that intelligently optimizes and sorts data in the partition, makes for much less head jumping in the drive and much higher sustain transfer rates, I can load new maps in TF2 damn near as fast as a SSD user for instance.


The drive itself buffer to disk is rated for like 134MB sustained max, and I can drag and drop a 4GB file onto or off of C:\ and have it perform at 100% capacity for the entire transfer because the head is reading in sequence sector by sector and not jumping all over willy-nilly.


Disk to buffer is even better, I've seen 150MB/s speeds off the drive in read operations, which is really ironic because that's identical to the 10,000 RPM Raptor drive performance numbers. Obviously their burst and non-sequential speeds are almost double these numbers, but still.

I'm wondering if RAID1 on an (assuming you don't use O&O) un-optimized disk set will get to or above that performance threshold.

(oh, if your controller lets you designate a 'primary' drive, make it the new one for obvious technology upgrade speed increases)

Here's a benchmark I just ran for comparison;

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Hmmmm, sounds like project time.  Multiple comparisons using unoptimized and optmized drives.  Never heard of O&O til now.

[Kirby]

Karrde link=topic=6255.msg239551#msg239551 date=1329861999]
Never heard of O&O til now.

It's pretty fucking cool, it allows you to separate the files into 3 zones on the drive based on what they are.

Since the beginning of the partition (outside of the platter) is fastest in sequential read/write operations because there's less track seeking to be done, you can put the most accessed/written files there, and stuff things like the Windows core files on the inside of the drive because they're rarely re-written, so they'll just chill out and not be in the way.

It leaves a very large open area between the zones, so fresh data always has very large contiguous areas to use and there's less fragmentation going on as a result of daily use. Obviously when there's major changes a lot of data needs to be moved for a full defrag operation, but that's why weeknights and work were invented - to give us time to run defrags.

[k0ala]

I'm back from a hard day supporting RAID cards, come to find out that Kirby's already answered it.

Yeah! What he said!

I tried the default mobo raid once. It was great right up until it failed.

[HeK]

I'm back from a hard day supporting RAID cards, come to find out that Kirby's already answered it.

Yeah! What he said!

I tried the default mobo raid once. It was great right up until it failed.

SAN>Dedicated Raid>Software Raid>no raid>Tape backups>mobo raid.

Almost every mobo-raid mirror I have seen with problems duplicated errors onto the good drive.

[zaneyard]

as a response to hek, I'm using windows 7's "dynamic" drives as a software raid and it seems to work pretty well so far.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Well this broaches the question then.  As I have one failed disk and one good disk, whats the best thing moving forward?

[HeK]

Karrde link=topic=6255.msg239586#msg239586 date=1329883449]
Well this broaches the question then.  As I have one failed disk and one good disk, whats the best thing moving forward?

You should be able to break the array and still access the single drive.
I'd buy a new disc, and backup your data to another source before you rebuild; using either single disk or software mirror.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

reccs for good software options?  Since like I said, one crashed disk and one reinstall caused by propagation of errors.  Also, am I boned for just making a disc image using clonezilla or something right now as that would include imaging the RAID drivers.  As I recall it's super not possible or at the very least quite problematic switching from RAID to AHCI on the fly.  Which also begs the question, running in SW RAID, does the biod need to be set to RAID or AHCI?

*edit*

if it's AHCI it'd be nice since then I could have 2 drives in RAID with 1 as a clone drive for backup (as I said earlier, if BIOS RAID is turned on, all drives must be in RAID together or none)

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Ok after mulling iot over with HeK I think he's right, an incremental backup solution + system clones will probably be a better solution in the end.  Data would exist in 3 places.

[HeK]

That and you don't need the accessibility, just the persistence of your data.
Backups are always better then RAID, unless you stand to loose if you cannot access your data for a few minutes/hours.

[k0ala]

Much love. RAID is not a backup. Even with redundancy and/or parity, it still only counts as existing in one place.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

Ok heres my new issues.

So, I cloned my old sata 2 drive onto the new sata 3.I'm guessing I know whats up but I need more tech questions answered.  So my mobo uses 2 dif controllers and drivers for AHCI.  I cloned my sata 2 to my sata 3.  Which I suppose copies over the sata 2 controller drivers.  So I'd guess this is why my new HDD is showing up as an IDE device as opposed to sata.  This is both in windows and in bios.  Is there anyway to fix this without doing a fresh install of windows (and specifying the correct driver at time of install)?  I really bloody well don't wanna do a full reinstall and update.  I suppose I could make it LESS of a pain in the ass by doing a full backup, wipe the new drive, install, and apply the backup.  Anyone have experience doing this, and is the performance difference really worth it anyway?