Installing HDD's in Raid 0

XZR · Feb 10, 2010

Hi guys,

I want to install a Western digital velociraptor to my new computer. It will be a 300gb one and i can only afford 1 at the moment. But I want to later on add another 300gb one in raid 0, is this possible without deleting OS, programs etc.. how can i do it? do i need to back up everything?

Also is the WD velociraptor fastest HDD out at the moment? and is it faster than 6gb/s HDD that starting to come out?

Thanks people!

psionic98 · Feb 10, 2010

SSDs are faster, but more expensive and some functions dont work right in a raid config such as TRIM that cleans up garbage when idle etc

you can do a raid0 after the fact.. it can be annoying and you may/may not fail at it, but it is possible check out the link below
Installing raid0 after windows install

dejo · Feb 10, 2010

If you are on a newer intel chipset board, ie. one that has the ich8 or ich9 or ich10 when you set up your OS, make sure that you have raid enabled in the bios and then load the os. after the os is installed install the intel matrix storage manager or the intel rapid store manager, and from there you should be able to add drives into a raid setup at will. check it out at intels homepage.

EarthDog · Feb 10, 2010

Im going to have to look that up. I did not know that you could install R0 with an existing install!! I always thought going to R0 you would have to reinstall just b/c of the way it works (striping). The IMSM will build the array if its preexisting?

The raptors are the fastest mechanical desktop drive out sure. SSD's are MUCH faster though, especially in acces times and reads over a single drive. Just b/c one doesnt have TRIM in raid (which like psionic said) doesnt mean its crap or shouldnt be done. There is a function called Garbage Collection that works with SSD's in raid that works just as good if not better than TRIM.

ChaosInMind · Feb 10, 2010

First, have you considered Samsung Spinpoint F3's? They have a single 500Gb platter and offer 240Mbps in a 2 drive Raid 0 config. Three drives push about 300Mbps+. Short stroking can give you about 9ms seek times. Two drive setup costs $100, three drive setup costs $150.

Secondly, you will have to ghost your OS partition and re-image it on the new configuration.

This discussion one individual had 4 of them in Raid 0 but didnt short stroke, he was getting 342Mbps. Short stroking I bet the average would go up to 370+ and have an access time of 9ms or less.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1475470

Pictures of benchmarks:::::::::

1 Samsung Spinpoint F3

2 Samsung Spinpoint F3

EarthDog · Feb 10, 2010

Seek times are already 8.9 stock

. But those are some nice inexpensive drives no doubt.

Marshmallow64 · Feb 10, 2010

EarthDog said:
Im going to have to look that up. I did not know that you could install R0 with an existing install!! I always thought going to R0 you would have to reinstall just b/c of the way it works (striping). The IMSM will build the array if its preexisting?

That is correct you will need to reformat, set up RAID 0, then reinstall the OS.

mattspalace · Feb 11, 2010

I actually have 3 of the 500GB Spinpoints coming in the mail. I plan on running RAID50 and I'll short stroke my C: drive to about 250GB. These drives are cheap and fast. After messing with SSDs for a few months, I'm looking forward to trying out these seriously dense 500GB platters from Samsung.

ChaosInMind · Feb 11, 2010

mattspalace said:
I actually have 3 of the 500GB Spinpoints coming in the mail. I plan on running RAID50 and I'll short stroke my C: drive to about 250GB. These drives are cheap and fast. After messing with SSDs for a few months, I'm looking forward to trying out these seriously dense 500GB platters from Samsung.

I know SSD's are faster, but my whole system is fast as it is. I may upgrade to SSD's in a year or two when the prices drop (if they ever drop) but I'm more likely to pick up 1 or 2 more F3's for 3 or 4 way RAID0. I'm not too concerned about data loss as my second partition is in RAID1. and have a snapshot of my OS. If a failure occurs I can just ghost it back.

Were you running those in Raid5 or Raid0? If Raid0 you may get away with 100GB per HDD for 300GB total. Anything less than 100GB per HDD didnt show any real improvements in throughput. The difference between 100 and 125 is negligible as well. (maybe 0.3ms and no throughput difference).

Also make sure to leave yourself enough room. Even shortstroked if you run out of space it will cripple performance, so make sure when you shortstroke youll be having about 40-50% free space on that disk after all your games and apps are installed.

mattspalace · Feb 11, 2010

Yeah I've done lots of RAID'ing in my days...

Setup will be RAID 0+5; still thinking about the RAID 0 space I want.. Storage isn't much of a factor since I have plenty of external storage as well.

Joeteck · Feb 11, 2010

XZR said:
Hi guys,

I want to install a Western digital velociraptor to my new computer. It will be a 300gb one and i can only afford 1 at the moment. But I want to later on add another 300gb one in raid 0, is this possible without deleting OS, programs etc.. how can i do it? do i need to back up everything?

Also is the WD velociraptor fastest HDD out at the moment? and is it faster than 6gb/s HDD that starting to come out?

Thanks people!

Yes... This is what you do, now to get prepared.

Move the OS drive to a different controller.. Jmicron or what ever it is..

Go into BIOS and set the chipset to the RAID function... restart.

Install the driver for the raid.

Shut down. Move the drive back to the sata port that you just enabled RAID onto.

It should boot successfully. Done adding the RAID driver..

Now, to add the second drive...for RAID 0.

Use your imaging software of choice. I like Acronis. Image the drive.

Add the second drive, and run the RAID setup. (Control-I for intel. Control-N, for Nvidia)

Create a new RAID 0, Default all settings, minus the size of the partition. Here is your chance to short stroke if you wanted to. Two 300gig Vraptors...I have this! Create 150gig Partition. When you boot into windows, use the remainder for temp storage.

Restart using your imaging DISK, (acronis). Restore image to RAID 0.

Done.

Grieg · Feb 11, 2010

I've done this a few times. For me, the easiest way was to:

1) Create an image my original install (handy for backup reasons as well)
2) Save it off somewhere. External drive, NAS, etc...
3) Install and setup the RAID. Create partitions as desired (short-stroke partition, swap partition, data partition, or whatever.)
4) Restore image to RAID disk.

I think I prefer this method over an in-place RAID upgrade, although I've never done that either. I'm not sure what kind of process takes place to move the data across the stripes and what kind of data fragmentation you're going to get from doing that. I'm also unsure how you could short-stroke the array using that process.

There are some free image utilities out there, although I've not tried any of them. I use and like Norton Ghost.

http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml#imaging

Not sure how up to date that page is, but hopefully it helps get you going.

Anyway... have fun.

ChaosInMind · Feb 11, 2010

I recommend Symantec Ghost, mainly due to the large implementation of the software and large support base. I still say you may want to consider Samsung F3's over raptors though... You can get THREE Samsung F3's for the price of a single Velociraptor and get much faster speeds.

gbovs · Apr 29, 2010

P5Q pro Turb0

Hi chaos

got the same mobo as you have and wanted to ask if you did not mind How you setup the raid array on this board

I am using vista ultimate 64bit

but the array seems slow for a raid
someone said that the sata is using the ide drivers instead of the sata drivers in vista and this looks to be true

Have you any info that can help

thanks

Kevin (GBovs)

ChaosInMind · Apr 29, 2010

gbovs said:
Hi chaos

got the same mobo as you have and wanted to ask if you did not mind How you setup the raid array on this board

I am using vista ultimate 64bit

but the array seems slow for a raid
someone said that the sata is using the ide drivers instead of the sata drivers in vista and this looks to be true

Have you any info that can help

thanks

Kevin (GBovs)

Don't use the JMicron controller first off... I think those two ports are different colors. You want to use the Intel chipset which is all the other ports. Secondly just make sure RAID is set in the BIOS for the intel chipset. Last but not least, make sure to install the actual intel drivers and RAID utility for the ICH10R. You can enable write back caching in the utility to enhance the performance.

Let me know if you need more help I can probably write up a quick step-by-step.

gbovs · May 16, 2010

ChaosInMind said:
Don't use the JMicron controller first off... I think those two ports are different colors. You want to use the Intel chipset which is all the other ports. Secondly just make sure RAID is set in the BIOS for the intel chipset. Last but not least, make sure to install the actual intel drivers and RAID utility for the ICH10R. You can enable write back caching in the utility to enhance the performance.

Let me know if you need more help I can probably write up a quick step-by-step.

Hi
ChaosInMind thanks for the excellent reply : Got a problem and that is if you select bios to turn of JMicron controller you lose the D drive and and ide hard disk connected to the onboard ide cable con - cant find a way round it....
Have setup raid as you suggest its as I had it ...but no improvement in speed prob have to get better hard drive and mem like you have ... thanks Kevin

Installing HDD's in Raid 0

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