Installing RAID 0 on ICHR9

[Konadreamer]

I was just wondering if it is possible to go from my current single drive setup to a striped array withough having to completely wipe my current disk. I have an Asus P5K Deluxe with a single hard drive and I would just like to get a duplicate drive and do a striped array. Do I really have to start from scratch or can I just load the raid drivers and do the setup in WinXP Pro?

I have a Samsung Spinpoint 500GB with NCQ running in standard IDE mode. What will I have to do to make it ACHI and RAID 0? Will I have to switch my SATA Optical drive to the JBM363 controller to mount the array while keeping the array on the Intel controller?


Please don't beat me up.....I'm a total noobler when it comes to RAID.

THanks!

 

[jpeyton]

Don't bother with RAID 0.

 

[Roguestar]

1) You'll need to format the drive and start over with RAID.
2) "I'm a total noobler when it comes to RAID" = oh dear god do not do RAID-0
3) What jpeyton said.
4) It's not worth the time, effort and reduced time to failure.
5) I post this next quote in most RAID-0 threads, and with good reason:

Originally posted by: AnandTech HD Review
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast loading times
The results speak for themselves with the RAID 0 setups offering extremely minor performance improvements in actual game load testing. You will likely not be able to notice any differences during actual game play with a RAID 0 setup. We know it was impossible for us.

BF2 Daqing Oilfields loading times
Once again we see a minimal difference between our RAID 0 and single drive configurations in this benchmark with only a one second difference in load times. In repeated testing it was difficult to discern any differences between the RAID 0 and single drive setups.

Nero Recoding
If you do a lot of video encoding then RAID 0 could end up saving you some precious minutes each day. Is it worth the cost or effort? Probably not, but it is one area besides benchmarking where RAID 0 actually made a difference. Of course, if you don't already have the fastest CPU for encoding available, that would have a far greater impact than RAID 0.

File Copying
We finish our tests with a benchmark that should have favored the RAID 0 setups due to a pure write scenario. Unlike our iPeak test (and for that matter a similar test in PCMark05) where the largest differences in scores between setups were generated, we have RAID 0 making no difference in this test and actually scoring worse than a single drive setup in two instances.

Final Thoughts
If it is not obvious by now, RAID 0 will provide outstanding results in synthetic benchmarks but really does nothing in actual applications.
RAID 0 sounds impressive in a system configuration and provides a performance placebo effect when viewing synthetic benchmarks. However, RAID 0 is just not worth the trouble or cost for the average desktop user or gamer, especially with the software RAID capabilities included on most motherboards.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

While I have heard that it is possible, the effort required to do so is definitely not worth it. Are you doing RAID 0 for the speed or do you just need the space. I would recommend just using them as two different drives. I'm all for RAID, but you have to use it in an environment where a) it can be put to use and b) be implemented well.

 

[yuppiejr]

I don't even know why RAID 0 is considered "RAID" at all - there's nothing REDUNDANT about striping 2 disks to create a single volume unlike the other forms that include parity information on other drives in the array. "RAID" 0 is really only suitable for creating fast scratch disk volumes for use in multimedia creation and editing workstations or for people who like to generate impressive benchmark numbers that have little or no practical impact on day to day perofrmance.

For long term data storage you are better off with a RAID 1 mirror set or RAID 5/10 array with the appropriate external tape or disk backup system depending on your performance needs and budget.

 

[Old Hippie]

"I'm a total noobler when it comes to RAID" = oh dear god do not do RAID-0

LOL!

 

[Cutthroat]

I've been using RAID for years, due to new HDD technology I will likely stop when I can get new HDD's, I'll give you some pro's and con's.

Pro's
-Windows load times are a couple of seconds faster, not much.
-Access times are quicker, doesn't make much real-world performance difference except in a couple of cases.
-Flight Simulator is much faster on RAID due to it's constant HDD usage (this is the reason I do it).

con's
-Can be difficult to set up in some scenarios.
-Big gamble of data corruption
-Probably have to reconfigure and reformat if you change your motherboard.
-Requires specific BIOS settings, drivers, and software that can be a pain in the ass.

In my short list of upgrades is either a couple of Raptors (really expensive in Canada), or a couple of new PMR drives that can almost reach the performance of the Raptor, see this review at Tom's. I'm really sick of dealing with RAID, it's a pain in the ass.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Konadreamer
I was just wondering if it is possible to go from my current single drive setup to a striped array withough having to completely wipe my current disk. I have an Asus P5K Deluxe with a single hard drive and I would just like to get a duplicate drive and do a striped array. Do I really have to start from scratch or can I just load the raid drivers and do the setup in WinXP Pro?

I have a Samsung Spinpoint 500GB with NCQ running in standard IDE mode. What will I have to do to make it ACHI and RAID 0? Will I have to switch my SATA Optical drive to the JBM363 controller to mount the array while keeping the array on the Intel controller?


Please don't beat me up.....I'm a total noobler when it comes to RAID.

THanks!

Yes you can, and ignore the disinformation.

Intel Matrix Storage Manager can build RAID0 on fly, from Windows... but first you will have to enable RAID ROM in BIOS. It might be little tricky to enable RAID ROM and keep your boot drive out of it.

 

[Konadreamer]

Ok, I'm convinced.....no RAID 0 ! Thanks for setting me straight on this!

 

[Cutthroat]

In order to get the most out of your single SATA drive(s) you should use the AHCI setting in the P5K BIOS to enable the advanced features of SATA, read your mobo manual.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Yes you can, and ignore the disinformation.

Intel Matrix Storage Manager can build RAID0 on fly, from Windows... but first you will have to enable RAID ROM in BIOS. It might be little tricky to enable RAID ROM and keep your boot drive out of it.

I'm setting up a Gigabyte P35 system. I want to go the Matrix RAID route.
You're saying I can simply do my fresh install on one of the disks (in non-RAID mode), then switch over to RAID mode and have a RAID array built using the fresh install?

 

[Old Hippie]

Looks like it.

Seamless migration from a single hard drive to a RAID 0 or RAID 1 dual hard drive array without requiring OS reinstallation. Additional migrations to higher levels of RAID are also supported.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Here is a link to another guide brought to you from a local forum, austinmodders.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Yes you can, and ignore the disinformation.

Intel Matrix Storage Manager can build RAID0 on fly, from Windows... but first you will have to enable RAID ROM in BIOS. It might be little tricky to enable RAID ROM and keep your boot drive out of it.

I'm setting up a Gigabyte P35 system. I want to go the Matrix RAID route.
You're saying I can simply do my fresh install on one of the disks (in non-RAID mode), then switch over to RAID mode and have a RAID array built using the fresh install?

Yes, but, theres problem:

You must load RAID drivers before boot drive is moved to RAID controlled SATA channel.In other words, now you have regular SATA. Switching to RAID in BIOS (without creating array), will render system non bootable, with known "BOOT DRIVE NOT ACCESSIBLE" BSOD.

How I did it is that I had unused silicon image controller, I enabled it, installed drivers, moved boot drive to it, and then I changed in BIOS intel SATA to SATA RAID, then installed RAID drivers, finally put back boot drive to now SATA RAID.

The link deals with same problem. This problem doesn't exist if boot drive is already on SATA RAID, drivers are loaded; but as a standalone device.

 

[Blain]

Can a RAID 0 array be converted to a 10 array (without reformatting), by adding two more HDs and let the controller build a RAID 10?

Would that just be begging for data corruption?

 

[Cutthroat]

Originally posted by: Blain
Can a RAID 0 array be converted to a 10 array (without reformatting), by adding two more HDs and let the controller build a RAID 10?

Would that just be begging for data corruption?

I beleive that just depends on the controller you are using, the software RAID such as Intel Matrix RAID can do that, I don't think you can do it with a hardware RAID config.