Onboard Raid 5 Viable?

[Apollo686]

I have a nVidia 680i montherboard with onboard support for Raid 5. I know the performance will not be anywhere near an add in card, but I'm wondering if it will be worth it at all. I have four 250gb SATA 300 drives I was going to use, and then I have Vista x64 on a 200gb SATA 300 drive, and a 120gb SATA 300 drive filled with music.

The array would be for storage of movies and music. I have about 700gb of stuff give or take and backing up that much stuff is pretty hard, so I thought raid 5 would be a good option. Basically I like the idea of the fault tollerance, don't care about increased speeds, and if it's more reliable then 4 seperate drives I'm happy. I know Raid isn't an alternative to backup, but is it safer than not?

If I lost everything it would suck, but it is what it is. It's not family photos or work related client files, just entertainment stuff. What's the verdict?

 

[XeeN]

Good question - I'm bookmarking this post since I had a similar question in mind.

 

[devman]

As you noted RAID is not an alternative to backing up your data properly. The only thing raid protects is physical failure of the drive. I've personally never had a HDD crap out on me or physically crash, maybe I'm lucky but in my experience data is far more vulnerable to things like accidental overwrites and file eating viruses ravaging your system, which RAID would not protect against.

 

[drizzt81]

I know Raid isn't an alternative to backup, but is it safer than not?

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1030595021&postcount=4

RAID, in whatever form is not a replacement for backing data up. It is used as an uptime tool. At best RAID can protect the user from one source of data loss, physical drive failure. It adds at least one more source of data loss at the same time: either controller or driver problems.

There are a lot of ways, many of which occur far more frequently that will cause you to lose your data, even if you run RAID-1. Here's a short list:

• hitting delete on a file that you did not mean to
• messing around with a partitioning program
• Installing a new OS
• Getting a Virus infection
• Some program doing something stupid and overwriting a file
• ...

As such, I advise you to be aware that RAID is not backup. Not even in the farthest sense of the word backup.

 

[Madwand]

I know Raid isn't an alternative to backup, but is it safer than not?

Jury's out on that one. RAID 5, esp. inexpensive implementations bring some risks of their own -- bugs due to increased complexity, user errors due to increased complexity, issues due to interaction of RAID implementation, drivers, drives, and OS.

I've seen RAID arrays go critical for unknown reasons. I've seen RAID 5 arrays go inconsistent for unknown reasons. I've seen RAID arrays just disappear.

RAID 5 can be great, and even some on-board RAID 5 can give great performance. I just wouldn't feel right about using it, and particularly building up a large volume of data; relying on the false sense of security that RAID can bring, without any form of backup.

 

[ribs1]

Jury's out on that one. RAID 5, esp. inexpensive implementations bring some risks of their own -- bugs due to increased complexity, user errors due to increased complexity, issues due to interaction of RAID implementation, drivers, drives, and OS.

I've seen RAID arrays go critical for unknown reasons. I've seen RAID 5 arrays go inconsistent for unknown reasons. I've seen RAID arrays just disappear.

RAID 5 can be great, and even some on-board RAID 5 can give great performance. I just wouldn't feel right about using it, and particularly building up a large volume of data; relying on the false sense of security that RAID can bring, without any form of backup.

Very well said. I would agree with everything here.
I do believe however that Raid 1 is probably slightly safer than a single drive. If the controller pukes or driver problems etc. Both disks can be independently read.

 

[hardwarephreak]

Another factor..

Most people run RAID 5 for storage purposes and most people don't boot from thier RAID 5 array. So you have all of this data on this "onboard" controller. If your board takes a dump for whatever reason, or you upgrade, it is going to be a royal PITA to get your data. When you have your array on a add-in controller it is much more transferrable. I have had people hunt down and purchase the exact same motherboard just to recover thier RAID 5 data.

When you run your OS on a RAID array, to be honest, who cares if it takes a dump. Hopefully if you are smart it is only an inconvenience of rebuilding the array and reconfiguring a new install.

 

[general]

Use the RAID-5, just buy a 500GB or 750GB drive in a USB enclosure for occasional backup and leave it unattached from any wiring in your house the rest of the time. Ideally, off site. Then you have a proper backup and fault tolerance for a drive loss.

 

[stevo.k]

How much of a performance diff is there between the 680i onboard RAID vs an add on card? I'm thinking of putting 2 Raptor 150s on RAID 0 and 2 Seagate 750's on RAID 1 on my system, using the 680i native RAID controller.

I have a nVidia 680i montherboard with onboard support for Raid 5. I know the performance will not be anywhere near an add in card, but I'm wondering if it will be worth it at all.

 

[Lazn_Work]

What drives are they? If they are WD non RE drives, don't do this. Otherwise, sure.

 

[[LYL]Homer]

Use the RAID-5, just buy a 500GB or 750GB drive in a USB enclosure for occasional backup and leave it unattached from any wiring in your house the rest of the time. Ideally, off site. Then you have a proper backup and fault tolerance for a drive loss.

QFT, this is a very good option.

 

[Eickst]

If this is an onboard controller don't use the hardware's raid setup. Use them as independent drives and let the OS do software raid. The reason I say this is because on board motherboard controllers use the host CPU anyway, so software raid isn't going to increase the load on the CPU. Software RAID stores array information on the drives, whereas using a controller will set it up in the "firmware" of the "hardware" based controller.

If the motherboard craps out, with software raid you can plug it in to another system and reconfigure the array. On a "firmware" type setup, if the motherboard goes you'll have to re setup the array in the "firmware" which in most cases erases the drives when initializing the array.

You say potato, I say po-tah-to. Whatever.

 

[drizzt81]

If this is an onboard controller don't use the hardware's raid setup. Use them as independent drives and let the OS do software raid.

Not an option for most Windows users, since WinXP does not support RAID-1 or RAID-5 and Vista Home doesn't support dynamic disks at all.

 

[Eickst]

Not an option for most Windows users, since WinXP does not support RAID-1 or RAID-5 and Vista Home doesn't support dynamic disks at all.

There are ways to get Windows XP to run software raid 5. I didn't realize that Vista hosed people on Dynamic disks.

 

[PopeKevinI]

I generally recommend against using on-board RAID for data storage because it can be a significant headache if your next motherboard won't support the array. Yes RAID 5 would protect you against a disk failure, but what if your mobo fails?

I'd suggest getting a good RAID card for this. They're less volatile than mobos (no capacitors to blow up, for example) and much easier to replace with identical controllers that will support the array.

 

[Madwand]

If this is an onboard controller don't use the hardware's raid setup. Use them as independent drives and let the OS do software raid. The reason I say this is because on board motherboard controllers use the host CPU anyway, so software raid isn't going to increase the load on the CPU. Software RAID stores array information on the drives, whereas using a controller will set it up in the "firmware" of the "hardware" based controller.

If the motherboard craps out, with software raid you can plug it in to another system and reconfigure the array. On a "firmware" type setup, if the motherboard goes you'll have to re setup the array in the "firmware" which in most cases erases the drives when initializing the array.

Did you read this stuff somewhere, or did you invent it yourself?

It's outright wrong for several implementations. I'd like to know where it's true, if at all. Any RAID implementation that stores all its configuration on the electronics and not the hard drives is just asking for trouble. The same mistake could be made by a hardware controller -- let's say the controller goes "poof" -- what then?

For example, I just took an array that was built using nForce3 onboard RAID, and moved it to a machine running nForce 430, and it worked just fine.

To be clear: There certainly are some motherboard RAID compatibility issues. But to say that these issues apply to all implementations in every case, etc., is just ignorant.

 

[Madwand]

Use the RAID-5, just buy a 500GB or 750GB drive in a USB enclosure for occasional backup and leave it unattached from any wiring in your house the rest of the time. Ideally, off site. Then you have a proper backup and fault tolerance for a drive loss.

I agree.. a hybrid approach like this can be the best combination of saving your money and increasing your data safety.

 

[Madwand]

How much of a performance diff is there between the 680i onboard RAID vs an add on card? I'm thinking of putting 2 Raptor 150s on RAID 0 and 2 Seagate 750's on RAID 1 on my system, using the 680i native RAID controller.

Logically, the difference for desktop / non-multi-user server would be minimal. However, there have been some reports of 680i RAID preforming poorly, and of course the earlier issue of 680i SATA working badly. Be sure to update the BIOS and drivers where possible.

You'd have to run some tests in your own environment to be sure about its performance.

Moreover, Intel RAID 1 has been known to perform better than nVIDIA RAID 1 for reads. So unless nVIDIA happened to improve its implementation in 680i, an Intel solution would be better for this.

Finally (sorry..) if you're thinking of RAID 1, you might think of an external backup instead -- it will be logically superior for data safety, as long as you do regular backups.

 

[Eickst]

Did you read this stuff somewhere, or did you invent it yourself?

It's outright wrong for several implementations. I'd like to know where it's true, if at all. Any RAID implementation that stores all its configuration on the electronics and not the hard drives is just asking for trouble. The same mistake could be made by a hardware controller -- let's say the controller goes "poof" -- what then?

For example, I just took an array that was built using nForce3 onboard RAID, and moved it to a machine running nForce 430, and it worked just fine.

To be clear: There certainly are some motherboard RAID compatibility issues. But to say that these issues apply to all implementations in every case, etc., is just ignorant.

Actually, I just reread what I wrote and wish I would have written it differently. Different RAID bioses use different methods of writing the metadata for the array to the array members. Even different controllers of the same brand may use different schemes for writing the info. Moving a RAID array from one controller to a different controller is typically met with bad results. If you had moved your nforce3 raid array to a board that had an integrated controller from a different brand you would probably know what I meant.

In software RAID the metadata is stored on the disks as well, but it doesn't matter what brand of controller you are using since it is OS specific, not controller specific.

The mere thought of moving an array to a different controller without backing up everything scares me.