Moving from Single Drive to Raid 5

[capreppy]

Hey all,

My current situation:
MoBo: GA-P35-DS3P (Rev 1.0)
HDD: Western Digital SE16 500GB (OS and all applications)
Opical: LG 20x DVD Writer
Both of these are currentl attached to the Gigabyte SATA Port.

I am looking to purchase 5 additional drives and configure as a Raid 5.

The current HDD is connected via Gigabyte SATA Port. I would like to move that drive to the Intel Port along with the 5 new drives. On the Raid Array, I would have OS and all applications. Looking for speed and performance out of the array. My current HDD is fast, but I would like faster (who doesn't)

Questions
- Will I lose all data when creating the new Raid Array? I assume I would, but need confirmation
- If so, can I do a backup (need software recommendations), install the new Raid Array, and restore the backup to that Raid Array?
- Is Raid 5 faster than raid 10 (1+0)? I do know that Raid 10 can only happen on even numbers of drives.

[unhappy_mage]

I would recommend making a separate array; raid 5 will not provide you with a speed increase when used as a boot drive. Make an array to put documents or music or whatnot on, and leave the boot drive alone.
- Will I lose all data when creating the new Raid Array? I assume I would, but need confirmation
If you were to use the OS disk as part of the array, yes. I wouldn't use WD SE drives for my array, though - they're subject to the TLER bug. Do a search for more information on this before you decide to buy WDs for the array.
- If so, can I do a backup (need software recommendations), install the new Raid Array, and restore the backup to that Raid Array?
Sure. If you don't mind installing the OS again, a simple file copy will suffice. You might encounter problems with any other method, since Windows sometimes encounters driver-related problems when changing what medium it's booting off of, but if you want to give it a try DriveImage XML or Acronis TrueImage are good choices.
- Is Raid 5 faster than raid 10 (1+0)? I do know that Raid 10 can only happen on even numbers of drives.
It depends what you mean by "faster". If sequential transfers are what you do, then raid 5 is a decent choice. Recording video or multichannel audio, stuff like that. But if your workload is seek-heavy, or does lots of small writes (most anything else falls in this category) raid 10 or 0+1 will be a better choice.

[capreppy]

If you were to use the OS disk as part of the array, yes. I wouldn't use WD SE drives for my array, though - they're subject to the TLER bug. Do a search for more information on this before you decide to buy WDs for the array.

I'll definitely look into this. I have been looking for an excuse to spend the extra couple of dollars to get the Seagate Barracude 7200.11's :)

I'll probably just get 4 of the 'cudas and create a RAID 10 for an effective 1TB storage unit. Can you partition a RAID10? Is there any benefit to doing so?

Sure. If you don't mind installing the OS again, a simple file copy will suffice. You might encounter problems with any other method, since Windows sometimes encounters driver-related problems when changing what medium it's booting off of, but if you want to give it a try DriveImage XML or Acronis TrueImage are good choices.

Installing the OS isn't too much of an issue, but the other software can be a royal PIA. Might be worth it though. I guess I could leave the data alone on the WD, install the RAID using the 'cudas and install the OS on the RAID and then copy over the data from the WD. I'll use the WD on my next build.

[pc299]

With about 30 seconds of googling you can find the WDTLER utility to enable/disable TLER on WD drives... I've used that to fix the TLER bug on a couple of server installations (lost a couple 250's in RAID10 due to TLER)

[unhappy_mage]

I'll probably just get 4 of the 'cudas and create a RAID 10 for an effective 1TB storage unit. Can you partition a RAID10? Is there any benefit to doing so?
You can, indeed, partition a RAID 10 array. Whether there are benefits to this depends more on one's philosophy than on partitioning in general than any performance aspects. If you like partitions, make them, but don't expect much performance difference one way or the other.
Installing the OS isn't too much of an issue, but the other software can be a royal PIA. Might be worth it though. I guess I could leave the data alone on the WD, install the RAID using the 'cudas and install the OS on the RAID and then copy over the data from the WD. I'll use the WD on my next build.
Sounds like a good plan.