RAID Questions

[Pinecone-sw]

Some questions about RAID and the drives attached.

In my case, using the ICH10R South Bridge and Intel RAID.

I have heard mention of metadata being written to RAID drives. Does this mean that the system reads the data off the drive to figure out what position the drive takes?

1) So a RAID 10 setup (mirrored and striped). If you rearrange the drives on the SATA ports, with the array still work and your data be accessible?

Example:

Original setup

Port 02 - Drive A
Port 03 - Drive B
Port 04 - Drive C
Port 05 - Drive D

Rearrange to:

Port 02 - Drive C
Port 03 - Drive A
Port 04 - Drive D
Port 05 - Drive B

2) If you have a RAID 1 setup (mirrored). If you take one drive and install as non-RAID on the same motherboard, with the drive work and the data be accessible?

 

[Nothinman]

I have heard mention of metadata being written to RAID drives. Does this mean that the system reads the data off the drive to figure out what position the drive takes?

That and other stuff too.

2) If you have a RAID 1 setup (mirrored). If you take one drive and install as non-RAID on the same motherboard, with the drive work and the data be accessible?

In most cases, yes.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

yes you can rearrange the the drive order as long as the signature on the drives has not been corrupted or altered.

I've never tried breaking mirrors. I would guess that you could be okay, but i'm not sure what flexibility the controller will give you. For example, you can pull one drive out and the other will still work fine, with errors of course saying that it's degraded. But when you put it back, it will likely try to rebuild. If you break it, it will likely mess up your partitions, which you could recover with some effort. you could probably put the other drive on a different port that was NON intel, if you have non intel SATA ports...that would likely work better.

 

[Pinecone-sw]

I was going to delete the array with the two mirrored drives, and disconnect one.

If the remaining one would work without any changes, that would be perfect.

At this time, to use the non-Intel SATA, I would have disconnect my optical drive (PATA), at least until the weekend, I should have a SATA optical drive by then.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

I'm not sure what would happen when you delete the array. I've never done that before. In theory, if you delete the array, then you would have 2 single drives, but you would need to set these up through the RAID BIOS. In the old days (4-5 years ago), I recall that Intell allowed for JBOD or single drive arrays. I'm not sure what they do today, but in either case when you go to recreate the drive in the BIOS, it will likely kill your partition. If you just pull one drive the other will keep running fine degraded, but I'm not sure how you add the drive back in as a stand alone disk. this might take some experimentation.

 

[Pinecone-sw]

OK, here is what I did.

I imaged the RAID 0 drives onto an SSD.

Disconnected both RAID drives and connected the SSD and booted the computer. It worked. During boot, it showed the SSD as non-RAID.

So I then hooked up one of the RAID drives with the SSD on the other channel. Booted, the RAID showed both drives in a RAID 0 with DEGRADED label (drives are now different sizes). I CTRL-I into the RAID manager and delete the RAID 0 Array. I get a warnign the the data on both drive will be erased. I figure no big deal, as I am backed up, and also still have the other RAID drive with all the data.

Computer booted, without problem, and the data was intact on BOTH drives.

A BIG WIN.

Thanks for the help.

 

[LSteve]

Hi gang.....I'm hoping someone can give me a little help with a build I'm doing tomorrow.
My question is raid setup.....how should I go about this? Should I use the Marvell SATA 6 connectors, or the Intel....and should I raid 0 or 1 or 5 .....your input is greatly appriciated. Hardware listed below.

P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
i7 2600k
Corsair Vengeance Blu 8 GB
CM V8 cooler

2-Crucial 64 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT064M4SSD2

1-Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid Drive ST750LX003

Corsair Builder Series CX600 600 watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply

Cooler Master HAF 912 Mid Tower ATX Case (RC-912-KKN1)

Windows 7 Professional SP1 64bit (Full) System Builder DVD 1 Pack

 

[groberts101]

Hi gang.....I'm hoping someone can give me a little help with a build I'm doing tomorrow.
My question is raid setup.....how should I go about this? Should I use the Marvell SATA 6 connectors, or the Intel....and should I raid 0 or 1 or 5 .....your input is greatly appriciated. Hardware listed below.

P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
i7 2600k
Corsair Vengeance Blu 8 GB
CM V8 cooler

2-Crucial 64 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT064M4SSD2

1-Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid Drive ST750LX003

Corsair Builder Series CX600 600 watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply

Cooler Master HAF 912 Mid Tower ATX Case (RC-912-KKN1)

Windows 7 Professional SP1 64bit (Full) System Builder DVD 1 Pack

use the Intel 6G ports and set it up with an R0. try it.. and you'll like it.

 

[Nothinman]

Hi gang.....I'm hoping someone can give me a little help with a build I'm doing tomorrow.
My question is raid setup.....how should I go about this? Should I use the Marvell SATA 6 connectors, or the Intel....and should I raid 0 or 1 or 5 .....your input is greatly appriciated. Hardware listed below.

P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
i7 2600k
Corsair Vengeance Blu 8 GB
CM V8 cooler

2-Crucial 64 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT064M4SSD2

1-Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid Drive ST750LX003

Corsair Builder Series CX600 600 watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply

Cooler Master HAF 912 Mid Tower ATX Case (RC-912-KKN1)

Windows 7 Professional SP1 64bit (Full) System Builder DVD 1 Pack

No offense, but if you don't even know what RAID level you want, you need to do more reading before putting your data there.

 

[groberts101]

No offense, but if you don't even know what RAID level you want, you need to do more reading before putting your data there.

that's funny!.. I almost wrote nearly the exact same thing.

But I thought I'd bite my lip for once since my responses tend to be a bit more... how shall I say?.. frank with a touch of smart-ass mixed in. And writing "no offense" doesn't alwways get me off the hook.