combining raid 0 to raid 1, is it possible?

[prim3geek]

Hi guys recently i open a topic regarding using 2 ssd both for my OS and apps and i decided to just raid 0 both SSD 60gb well as i have understand raid 0 will double the speed and performance yet not safe if 1 drive fail i will lose all the data, so i was thinking of raid 1 since as what i have understand raid 1 is mirroring which 1 drive copies to other drive and even if 1 drive fail i still have the data and can recover buy just adding another.

So what i have in mind is that i will do the raid 0 for speed and raid 1 for security. So my data on raid 0 can be saved. Is this setup possible? i can search on how to do this but i need to be certain first if this can be done.

Also this is the hard part. I will use 2 ssd for raid 0 so 60gb x2 is 120gb and pair a hdd instead of another ssd for raid 1, i dont even know what im talking about as i am thinking that i can combine raid 0 to create raid 1.

If this confusing just tell me how can i have speed + data security?

thanks a lot

 

[Blue Fox]

You can do nested RAID levels. You can combine RAID 0 and RAID 1 in either RAID 0+1 or RAID 10. Both require a minimum of 4 drives and will provide some redundancy. Depending on which drives fail, you can either sustain one or two drive failures and retain all your data. You're better off keeping the hard drives and SSDs separate however. You could run RAID 1 on your hard drives and RAID 0 on your SSDs and backup the RAID 0 array to your RAID 1 one.

 

[MrGuvernment]

or if you have intel raid, you can do 2 raids on 2 drives

i would keep both SSD's in raid 0 and go buy a normal SATA harddrive and do a backup to it of important data.

 

[omniscence]

Do you really need more performance than a single SSD can provide?

I would use a single SSD as boot and application drive and store all data an a RAID1 or RAID5 consisting of SATA harddisks. If a single SSD is not sufficient you can RAID0 multiple SSDs, but do not store important data on it.

 

[prim3geek]

You can do nested RAID levels. You can combine RAID 0 and RAID 1 in either RAID 0+1 or RAID 10. Both require a minimum of 4 drives and will provide some redundancy. Depending on which drives fail, you can either sustain one or two drive failures and retain all your data. You're better off keeping the hard drives and SSDs separate however. You could run RAID 1 on your hard drives and RAID 0 on your SSDs and backup the RAID 0 array to your RAID 1 one.

Thanks, so whats gonna happen is that my 2x60gb ssd would turn into 120gb if its raid 0 then i'll pair it with typical sata HDD which is also 120gb (single disk) and make it raid 1 is that whats gonna happen?

or if you have intel raid, you can do 2 raids on 2 drives

i would keep both SSD's in raid 0 and go buy a normal SATA harddrive and do a backup to it of important data.

Alright im a bit noobie on raid so can you pls explain hows that gonna be?

Do you really need more performance than a single SSD can provide?

I would use a single SSD as boot and application drive and store all data an a RAID1 or RAID5 consisting of SATA harddisks. If a single SSD is not sufficient you can RAID0 multiple SSDs, but do not store important data on it.

yeah i need it, since i already have 2x60gb and does not have money to buy another SSD i should just use it for raid 0 not just to obtain faster loading or bootup but also gain space

 

[Freak1]

If money is the concern then using 4 drives in raid 10 is properly not what you are looking for. 4 SSDs are not cheap.

If you have 2x60 and 120gb is enough then use them in RAID 0 and backup the data from them on another disk.

 

[drescherjm]

Thanks, so whats gonna happen is that my 2x60gb ssd would turn into 120gb if its raid 0 then i'll pair it with typical sata HDD which is also 120gb (single disk) and make it raid 1 is that whats gonna happen?

The performance of your SSDs will probably be reduced to the performance of a hard drive. But that depends on the raid controller. I would expect a drastic reduction in random 4K writes.

 

[prim3geek]

thanks guys that really helps me a lot

 

[InvisiBill]

Thanks, so whats gonna happen is that my 2x60gb ssd would turn into 120gb if its raid 0 then i'll pair it with typical sata HDD which is also 120gb (single disk) and make it raid 1 is that whats gonna happen?

As far as I know, you need 4 identical drives to do RAID10. You have two drives striped in RAID0, and you have a RAID1 duplicate of each of those drives. A single SATA HDD would be much slower than striped SSDs, and would slow them down tremendously if this is possible.

Alright im a bit noobie on raid so can you pls explain hows that gonna be?

Intel's Matrix RAID lets you set up multiple types of RAID on a single pair of disks. The first part is striped across both disks (e.g 2x30GB to give you a striped 60GB for performance) and the second part is mirrored (2x30GB to give you 30GB of redundant storage).

Nobody else has said this, so I guess I will. Keep in mind that RAID is not a backup solution. RAID1 does provide redundancy in case of a single HDD failure, but that's it. If your PSU blows and takes out both drives, your data's gone. If you get a virus, both copies of the file are infected. If you accidentally delete something, it's deleted from both drives. RAID is really designed for uptime (having a duplicate disk running so it never skips a beat when one drive dies).

You're probably better off having a nightly/weekly/etc. backup copy all your files from the SSDs to the HDD. It would be best if the drive was installed in a separate system (immune to your PC's PSU failure). If it's directly accessible over the network (which makes backups and restores easy), it could also be susceptible to viruses and accidental deletions from the main PC.

 

[Aesma]

Previous answers are good, but just to be clear, what you want to do is not possible. You can't "RAID1" one HDD with two RAID0 SSDs. And even if you could, it would be incredibly stupid, as RAID is something that is "live", so the array is as fast as the slowest member, here, the HDD. Your SSDs would be wasted.

About SSDs, do you know about trim, and that it doesn't work in RAID ?

 

[drescherjm]

Previous answers are good, but just to be clear, what you want to do is not possible. You can't "RAID1" one HDD with two RAID0 SSDs.

linux software raid will let you do this. Not as raid 10 but you can use any block device as a raid member even other raid arrays. You probably also can do this with windows software raid in concert with HW or fake raid. Most HW raid or fakeraid will not let you do this though.

And even if you could, it would be incredibly stupid,

Agreed.

as RAID is something that is "live", so the array is as fast as the slowest member, here, the HDD.

I think in linux software raid reads could be made as fast as the SSD array but writes will most likely be as slow as the hard disk. Other raid implementations may not have the ability to read from the fastest member.

Your SSDs would be wasted.

RAID 1 is no substitute for a backup so I do not see this solving any problem even if it did not have the performance penalties.