Win2008 + software raid 5 + OS hd crash.

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RedChief

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I have a home server running Win2008r2 for which the the HD has crashed (on boot it hangs at Verifying DMI....). I'm poor (well, married) so I've been using a software raid5 fo the 4x2tb storage drives. This has been working fine. Now if I have to reinstall Win2008 on a new HD, can I remount the raid5 on the new install?

Also, I've tried booting into a recovery console with Win2008r2, Win7 64, and Win 7 32 install disks and in all three versions I get a error of "This version of System Recovery Options is not compatible".

Any ideas?
 
Yes, you can reinstall the OS then mount the software raid. I don't fully remember all of the steps, but it works fine. Honestly, once you are in to the OS and have the raided drives hooked up, it should be a simple matter of nabbing ownership ( or rather, saying that this raid belongs to this OS ), and assigning a drive letter.

Now, I would disconnect all the drives prior to doing an OS reload on your main drive. Just because I'm paranoid like that. Oh, and now would be an excellent time to check that your backups are sound. You do have backups, right?
 
My backups are ok for non-media, its the movie/tv library that would be a pain to rebuild (hence using a raid5).

Any ideas on why I can't get into the recovery console? Was hoping to try checking the MBR before reinstalling.
 
Never used windows software raid, but I would use that over hardware raid any day. Can't you boot from an external media and verify the raid is intact before doing an install? Should be a trivial thing.
 
You can get RocketRAID cards for less than $75, and they would be a far better solution than software RAID.
 
DeaconFrost said:
You can get RocketRAID cards for less than $75, and they would be a far better solution than software RAID.
Click to expand...

What happens when the card fails and it is not available at your local retailer and you need to get your system back up yesterday?
 
ezno_matrix said:
What happens when the card fails and it is not available at your local retailer and you need to get your system back up yesterday?
Click to expand...

Exactly! This is why you see so many folks talk about Raid not being a backup. I've had some luck with software Raid solutions being recognized when moved to different hardware, but whether it is software or hardware Raid I think it is a mistake to think that you've got a single hard drive (or two) failure accounted for to not account for all the other single points of failure.

I think a far better solution that getting too worked up over which Raid configuration, 5 vs 6 vs 10, software vs hardware, motherboard vs Windows, etc and especially spending big bucks on fancier Raid cards, most folks would be better suited spending less on sophistication and spending more on more hard drive space (especially with prices creeping back down) and having more backups, or at least having one backup, even of media files.
 
Good point, but how practical is it for a home user to back up tens of TB of data? Even if it is not that important to be backed up, data lost is still painful. The point of RAID is to avoid a single point of failure. Unfortunately, most home users only concentrate on HD failures. I know folks who swears by hardware RAID so they keep a spare card on hand. Software RAID reduces the dependency on hardware for which you would most likely not have a spare.
 
DeaconFrost said:
You can get RocketRAID cards for less than $75, and they would be a far better solution than software RAID.
Click to expand...
Different solutions to solve different problems. But if you are going to go hardware raid, do it right and get a good card.

Software raid has it's uses, as has been addressed. I use it in linux quite often for exactly the reasons outlined here. And I get some damn nice throughput out of those software raid configurations.
 
ezno_matrix said:
What happens when the card fails and it is not available at your local retailer and you need to get your system back up yesterday?
Click to expand...
RAID isn't and never was a backup method.

What happens when software corruption ruins your software RAID?

The golden rule that I've always been taught, going back 13 years now is to never let software do the job of hardware.
 
DeaconFrost said:
RAID isn't and never was a backup method.

What happens when software corruption ruins your software RAID?

The golden rule that I've always been taught, going back 13 years now is to never let software do the job of hardware.
Click to expand...
That's based on the assumption that raid is a hardware job. It's not. As I said previously, different solutions for different problems. You can't let your biases blind you to the job requirements.

I have used both software and hardware raid. I have had the issue where I've lost a raid card and had to wait a week to get it back in. In the almost decade that I've been using software raid, I have never lost an array, and I use software raid far more often than hardware. Granted, I'm talking about linux software raid here ( I don't have that much experience with windows raid ). That seems to be bullet proof; I've had power outages, brown outs, failed drives, partially failed drives, ect...It just seems to keep plugging away.

To each there own of course, but from my experience the only downside to linux software raid is performance more than stability/reliability.
 
XOR != OR said:
That's based on the assumption that raid is a hardware job. It's not. As I said previously, different solutions for different problems. You can't let your biases blind you to the job requirements.

I have used both software and hardware raid. I have had the issue where I've lost a raid card and had to wait a week to get it back in. In the almost decade that I've been using software raid, I have never lost an array, and I use software raid far more often than hardware. Granted, I'm talking about linux software raid here ( I don't have that much experience with windows raid ). That seems to be bullet proof; I've had power outages, brown outs, failed drives, partially failed drives, ect...It just seems to keep plugging away.

To each there own of course, but from my experience the only downside to linux software raid is performance more than stability/reliability.
Click to expand...

+1
You miss flexibility for software raid.
 
ezno_matrix said:
+1
You miss flexibility for software raid.
Click to expand...
Indeed. Software raid is far more agile than hardware.

Not that hardware raid is a bad choice, by any extent; it's just useful in different ways. For instance, for database and/or esxi hosts, hardware raid is the only way to go ( even assuming you could set up software raid for the datastores ). For high performance situations, I will always go with a hardware raid solution over software.

But as a majority of my clients are small/medium businesses, software raid on a linux box works pretty well.
 
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