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Add drive to raid 0

T

thurstmw

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 9, 2011
Messages
119
I have a HTPC which is running windows 7 with a 3tb software raid 0 of two drives. I am getting close to capacity and was wanting to add another drive or two to the array. Is this possible to just have it redistribute info over the new drives and then be working just fine? I dont have enough drives laying around to back it all up and and put it back on after rebuilding the array so I was hoping to not have to do that. If this is not possible with RAID 0 is there another raid type which would be able to do this so I could avoid this in the future?
 
I have avoid answering your question directly. You said "I don't have enough drives laying around to back it all up" means you don't have any backups of your raid 0 array? Honestly, I'd probably fix that situation before adding any more drives to this array. You're already running the risk of a catastrophic loss should either of the drives in the array die. Please don't add another drive to this. As data loss veteran, this is useful feedback I'm providing.
 
Pianomahnn said:
I have avoid answering your question directly. You said "I don't have enough drives laying around to back it all up" means you don't have any backups of your raid 0 array? Honestly, I'd probably fix that situation before adding any more drives to this array. You're already running the risk of a catastrophic loss should either of the drives in the array die. Please don't add another drive to this. As data loss veteran, this is useful feedback I'm providing.
Click to expand...

This would be useful feedback if I was very worried about the loss of data. Its not critical data just downloaded movies and ect for home serving. So no loss would be "catastrophic". It is not worth enough to buy additional drives to back it up. The only thing would be the hassel of downloading everything again.

Any feedback that actually answers my problem not makes up problems that dont exist?
 
Short answer, no.

Long answer - If you happen to have a raid controller that supports dynamic array expansion a.k.a online capacity expansion, then yes, it's possible. A lot of on-board / cheap raid controllers do not support that. Since you have software raid going, no... but in other instances you'd just have to check the documentation from the manufacturer

And while the other guy didn't really answer your question, it's still a good point. A 3 drive raid 0 is even more dangerous than a 2 drive raid 0. My other question would be, why the heck would you bother storing movies on such a volatile platform? Since this is a capacity issue, why not buy some other drives for data storage and move that data off the array? That way, when your array finally does blow up, it'll be somewhat easier to handle :)
 
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thurstmw said:
I have a HTPC which is running windows 7 with a 3tb software raid 0 of two drives.
Click to expand...
By software RAID do you mean with the onboard RAID controller of the motherboard or the actual software RAID engine built within the Windows OS?
 
voodoochildbc said:
And while the other guy didn't really answer your question, it's still a good point. A 3 drive raid 0 is even more dangerous than a 2 drive raid 0. My other question would be, why the heck would you bother storing movies on such a volatile platform? Since this is a capacity issue, why not buy some other drives for data storage and move that data off the array? That way, when your array finally does blow up, it'll be somewhat easier to handle :)
Click to expand...

I totally agree.

OP, listen to these two posts above me. Having a lot of drives in a RAID 0, be it hardware, software, or FakeRAID, it really makes things more unstable.

I'm using a software RAID0 setup right now, but absolutely nothing aside from programs is stored on it. Everything is backed to a server, tape, and external drives.

Only use RAID 0 when your data is absolutely non-critical and can be lost.

Seriously, if you have to, just add the third drive as a stand alone drive and store more movies, files, etc. onto it. If this is just for movies across a LAN, you won't see any performance loss by using a single drive. Just share the drive (or folder on the drive) with Samba and away you go. ;)
 
Red Falcon said:
Only use RAID 0 when your data is absolutely non-critical and can be lost.

Seriously, if you have to, just add the third drive as a stand alone drive and store more movies, files, etc. onto it. If this is just for movies across a LAN, you won't see any performance loss by using a single drive. Just share the drive (or folder on the drive) with Samba and away you go. ;)
Click to expand...

My data is absolutely non-critical and can be lost. That simple. If I end up buying a few more drives I will probably use RAID 5 or something since it dosent seem possible just to expand my array. Does any other RAID type support dynamic RAID expansion with out the controller specifically needing to support it such that I could do a software RAID with it?

If I add a drive as a standalone it complicates my storage organization and makes it harder for everyone else on my network using this for media streaming to find what they are looking for, especially through the ps3 which as far as I know dosent have a search function.

Please stop telling me to back up my stuff. I know. I dont care. I dont want to pay money for a bunch of storage that is only used as back up. I dont buy insurance when I can avoid it for the same reason.
 
Danny Bui said:
By software RAID do you mean with the onboard RAID controller of the motherboard or the actual software RAID engine built within the Windows OS?
Click to expand...

Windows OS RAID because in the previous system I was using the RAID card would not recognize drive formated as NTFS to put them in RAID. Not very useful for a 3tb RAID.
 
thurstmw said:
My data is absolutely non-critical and can be lost. That simple. If I end up buying a few more drives I will probably use RAID 5 or something since it dosent seem possible just to expand my array. Does any other RAID type support dynamic RAID expansion with out the controller specifically needing to support it such that I could do a software RAID with it?
Click to expand...
There are other software RAID implementations that supports Online Capacity Expansion without the controller needing to support it. Unfortunately none of those options are for Windows.

AFAIK, Windows 7's software RAID engine does not support Online Capacity Expansion. With taht said, since the data isn't valuable, you could always try it yourself and see what happens.
 
thurstmw said:
My data is absolutely non-critical and can be lost. That simple. If I end up buying a few more drives I will probably use RAID 5 or something since it dosent seem possible just to expand my array. Does any other RAID type support dynamic RAID expansion with out the controller specifically needing to support it such that I could do a software RAID with it?

If I add a drive as a standalone it complicates my storage organization and makes it harder for everyone else on my network using this for media streaming to find what they are looking for, especially through the ps3 which as far as I know dosent have a search function.

Please stop telling me to back up my stuff. I know. I dont care. I dont want to pay money for a bunch of storage that is only used as back up. I dont buy insurance when I can avoid it for the same reason.
Click to expand...

I never told you to back up your stuff. I said you could add the third drive as a stand-alone drive and just shared it through samba that it would save you the time and trouble of recreating your array. Do what you like though. ;)
 
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The point is:
- Raid 0 isn't likely going to benefit watching a movie
- You probably can't expand your RAID
- Your only issue is space
- You don't care about fault-tolerance
- Most likely, the only result of doing it your way is data loss or increasing your chance of data loss
- Therefore, add more disks for data outside of the raid.

If it really bugs other people to have to go to another location to get at the other drives data, make a mount point on your raid partition. But hey, if you have lots of time on your hands and the patience to re-download, rip, or transfer 2 terabytes worth of crap again, go ahead.

It sounds like the next time around (if you wish to follow the same pattern of fault-tolerance) dynamic disk or another JBOD-type solution would better suit your needs instead of raid 0. Those can be expanded very easily on the windows platform.
 
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[QUTOE]
It sounds like the next time around (if you wish to follow the same pattern of fault-tolerance) dynamic disk or another JBOD-type solution would better suit your needs instead of raid 0. Those can be expanded very easily on the windows platform.[/QUOTE]

Thank you for this one sentence, this is what I was looking for if my RAID could not be expanded. In fact with this information I am pretty sure my RAID is dynamic disk so I can expand it. I appreciate your input.
 
No problem, sorry we had to argue about it until you got your answer, haha...

But you can't have both a software raid and a spanned volume, the two are mutually exclusive. To be more specific, that type of dynamic disk that you want is called a spanned volume - - If your disks are striped (software raid 0), I don't believe you can go from that to spanned without losing data.
 
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voodoochildbc said:
No problem, sorry we had to argue about it until you got your answer, haha...

But you can't have both a software raid and a spanned volume, the two are mutually exclusive. To be more specific, that type of dynamic disk that you want is called a spanned volume - - If your disks are striped (software raid 0), I don't believe you can go from that to spanned without losing data.
Click to expand...

oh ok. So even though my drives are listed as dynamic that doesn't mean I can add a disk? It has to be a spanned volume? And if I do a spanned set up that means if a drive fails I will only loose what is on it not everything right? Is there any way to set up a dynamically expanding RAID 5 with a software RAID? I dont want to buy a new RAID card.
 
thurstmw said:
oh ok. So even though my drives are listed as dynamic that doesn't mean I can add a disk? It has to be a spanned volume? And if I do a spanned set up that means if a drive fails I will only loose what is on it not everything right? Is there any way to set up a dynamically expanding RAID 5 with a software RAID? I dont want to buy a new RAID card.
Click to expand...
You should be able to see what exactly is going on in disk management. The only type of dynamic disk you're going to be able to expand is a spanned volume. You can't expand or shrink any type of software raid.

The reason for this is because the data is already written in a sequential pattern across the existing drives. In order to expand that, it would have to move all the data around and cut it up differently... and because that's insane in a software raid (windows anyway), it's not allowed.

And yeah, even if you do a spanned volume, you'll have issues with the whole volume if only 1 drive goes out. Say you have 3 drives spanned and 1 dies. You can't just convert them back to basic and read the data on the drives. It'll go into a problem state and you have to use other software (likely a 3rd party tool) to read the data on the rest of the dynamic volumes. It's only slightly safer than raid 0, in that there's a chance you could get some of your data back.

So really, unless you use individual drives, there's not really a perfect solution to your dilemma.
 
Could he mount the drive as a folder and would make it appear expanded but not really?
 
Yeah, I think I mentioned that earlier. The only problem I can think of with that is it doesn't give a clear-cut representation of the space. But yeah, you could take E: (for example) and mount it as C:\movie
 
thurstmw said:
Windows OS RAID because in the previous system I was using the RAID card would not recognize drive formated as NTFS to put them in RAID. Not very useful for a 3tb RAID.
Click to expand...

A RAID card shouldn't care about what is on a drive.

voodoochildbc said:
Also in this type of situation, you could look at something like flexRAID for your current or future setup

http://www.flexraid.com/
Click to expand...

I was going to suggest the same, especially the Storage Pooling function, which should be ideal to combine multiple drives without any kind of RAID and its dangers.
 
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