Raid 1 questions

A

AP514

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 15, 2006
Messages
482
Hey all.... I am new to this so bear with me.....Do not want to do pure Software Raid.
I am looking to get a RAID CONTROLLER to install on my Computer. But most controllers that are in the $30-$80 range do not show Windows 10 or that large of a drive supported.
Here is what I am looking at doing.....
Install Windows 10 Pro on a Small 500GB SSD...
Then have 2- 12TB in Raid 1 with a 3rd 12TB drive as a long term to be loaded from the Raid 1 about 1 time every Month.

So looking for a Card and how to setup what I need..Ideas thoughts ??
 
What's your computer? Most motherboards have raid support if you're just looking for a mirrored disk. Otherwise a bit more info, like do you want hardware RAID with battery backup? Internal, external? SAS/SATA?
 
Well, I am using my old computer (See Specs) and will be using a program called Blue Iris (Surveillance-Cams).
My CPU is old in that one and I did not want to use up a lot of CPU power on using the "Storage Spaces" Dive option in Win 10 Pro. Although I am not sure how much CPU resources a simple Raid 1(mirror) would take.

Internal use..No battery.....
Wow, Kind of talking my self into trying the Windows Raid software and seeing how it goes....
 
Yeh, motherboard raid1 should work.
Set the sata to RAID in the bios
install to the SSD with only the SSD connected.
Add the other 2x 12tb drives, configure as a mirror in the bios, boot up, format the drive in Windows
Add the 3rd 12tb drive, boot up, format that in windows
 
Hum I was just going to do it thru Windows 10 Pro..Have OS on the SSD and will install the 3 drives.Go Disk Mgt to set up formats then on to Storage Space to set up the mirror(Raid 1)
 
AP514 said:
Hum I was just going to do it thru Windows 10 Pro..Have OS on the SSD and will install the 3 drives.Go Disk Mgt to set up formats then on to Storage Space to set up the mirror(Raid 1)
Click to expand...

that would be pure software RAID. you stated that was a non-option.
while it can be argued rather MB RAID is software or not, it is not windows RAID, at least.
 
You should build a FreeNAS box, and then present a CIFS share to your machine. That way your storage is safely mirrored in ZFS and if you old machine kicks the bucket your storage is still safe. FreeNAS 4 life.
 
The Windows option would at least carry over to a new motherboard, at least? I've never used Windows Raid, but the numbers I've seen don't make it look any worse than just setting it up in Windows.
 
i don't really trust storage spaces compared to just the basic windows disk management raid (yes disk management raid would work on any system)

but in any case you should have a off PC backup (as raid is not a backup)
 
Main problem with any sort of raid beside the newest software ones with data/metadate checksums like ZFS is that all data (data, metadata, raid stripes) are written sequentially disk by disk to the array. On a crash during a write it can happen that some disks are updated with new data, others not. This is called the write hole problem, http://www.raid-recovery-guide.com/raid5-write-hole.aspx. In case of a Mirror this can mean that the disks are not identical. Some Raid-1 implementations only use disk1 with disk2 only used in case of a disk1 failure. Other read from both for better performance what means they read bad data by chance. As traditional filesystems do not offer checksums on data or metadata, the OS is not able to detect if data is good or bad.

With older filesystems like ext4 or ntfs, the only solution is a good hardware raidadapter with bbu/flash protection to redo a lost write on next bootup. Newer filesystems like ZFS offer three solutions to solve this type of problems. With Copy on Write it can guarantee atomic writes what means that data + metadata changes are on disk or both discared. ZFS offers checksums on data and metadata so bad data on disks can be detected and auto repaired during read from redundancy or the file marked as corrupted. And at last it can protect its rambased writecache (several GB) with sync write and optionally an Slog for faster processing, just like hardwarerraid with the BBU/flash protection model.

With Windows ntfs and "simple software raid", the mirror helps when one disk just dies completely without a prior crash during a write what helps for accessability. But never really trust data on it.

Storage spaces and ReFS offer at least checksums on metadata and data when you activate and Copy on Write (two of the three main ZFS advantages) what makes it more secure than ntfs. The price: ReFS is slow and storage spaces quite complicated to manage and understand, not the easyness and performance of ZFS.

If your data are important, store all files on and work from a ZFS filer. No need for a mirror on Windows as there should not be important data. Backup the installation from time to time for easy recovery (ex Aomei what I use), prefer ECC RAM to avoid data corruption due RAM problems. Best ZFS implementation are Oracle Solaris with a genuine ZFS or the free Solaris forks like OmniOS with Open-ZFS and the ZFS/kernelbased/multithreded SMB server with support of ntfs alike permissions.
 
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