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How to build JBOD?

M

mertov

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Hi everyone I have Asrock extreme4 z77 Motherboard and two hdd and one ssd. Windows is installed on ssd I use hdds for storage. My question is how can I combine my two hdd and make them look like one hdd?
 
I really hope you didnt have those other 2 drives plugged in when you Installed Windows 7 because I read somewhere that 7 likes to put critical files on those drives, i can only guess boot files too.
 
Bo$$ said:
that's called RAID0, Remember if one disk fails you loose all data on both disks.
try this link http://download.asrock.com/manual/raid/Fatal1ty Z77 Performance/English.pdf
It starts with the guide page 4 onwards pretty simple. post back if you want some help
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Thanks for the reply but I know raid 0 and that is not I want. I already have ssd so I dont need raid 0 with my hdds. The thing that I want combine my 1 tb hdd and 3 tb hdd and make them 4 tb hdd with no partition. I dont need performance increase or data securtiy since my all files movies games etc.
 
eidairaman1 said:
I really hope you didnt have those other 2 drives plugged in when you Installed Windows 7 because I read somewhere that 7 likes to put critical files on those drives, i can only guess boot files too.
Click to expand...

I have experinced it :) Altough I installed os on ssd when i plugged one of my hdd out windows crashed and didnt work till i plug hdd in. I really doubt the problem is about second party sata3 controller. Because when I tried that again on sata2 no problem occured
 
mertov said:
Thanks for the reply but I know raid 0 and that is not I want. I already have ssd so I dont need raid 0 with my hdds. The thing that I want combine my 1 tb hdd and 3 tb hdd and make them 4 tb hdd with no partition. I dont need performance increase or data securtiy since my all files movies games etc.
Click to expand...

Ahh, shit sorry, i misread your first post, In the windows disk manager there is an option to 'extend' your partition, i've never used it personally but this should fulfill your usage :)

good luck :toast:
 
Bo$$ said:
Ahh, shit sorry, i misread your first post, In the windows disk manager there is an option to 'extend' your partition, i've never used it personally but this should fulfill your usage :)

good luck :toast:
Click to expand...

As far as I know disk manager just lets you extend or decrease partitions on the same disc but thanks anyway :)
 
JBOD is terrible, I would never recommend using it to anyone. You lose one drive so you lose everything. It's like RAID-0 without a speed boost. I would grab a 3rd drive and run RAID-5 to at least have redundancy and improved reads. Writes won't be as fast since the controller (or CPU,) has to calculate and store the parity block for each 2 data blocks written... but honestly if a drive fails, you can still use your degraded RAID. I've played SC2 off a degraded RAID while it was rebuilding. Loads were a little slower but it worked like a champ.
 
Aquinus said:
JBOD is terrible, I would never recommend using it to anyone. You lose one drive so you lose everything. It's like RAID-0 without a speed boost. I would grab a 3rd drive and run RAID-5 to at least have redundancy and improved reads. Writes won't be as fast since the controller (or CPU,) has to calculate and store the parity block for each 2 data blocks written... but honestly if a drive fails, you can still use your degraded RAID. I've played SC2 off a degraded RAID while it was rebuilding. Loads were a little slower but it worked like a champ.
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I think you are wrong about JBod please read here http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/jbod.htm so if I loose disc 1 the data on disc 2 will survive. As I mentioned earlier I dont need performence I just need tidiness :) Tidiness is really important for me
 
mertov said:
I think you are wrong about JBod please read here http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/jbod.htm so if I loose disc 1 the data on disc 2 will survive. As I mentioned earlier I dont need performence I just need tidiness :) Tidiness is really important for me
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Until the drive containing you partition table dies and now it doesn't matter if you have the data or not, everything that says where what is, is now gone. Trust me, I work with RAID regularly and I can tell you that it does not work the way you described. The RAID controller will say, "Crap, a drive died," and since it has no redundancy it won't let you use any of it because half of the volume is now dead. It may be "easier" to recover data from a JBOD disk than a RAID-0 disk, but recovering any data will suck. RAID-5 will at least give you that fault tolerance and improved performance. I can't recommend JBOD for just about any reason.

Your link also says nothing about being able to recover anything. From what I took away from it is that it is slightly easier than RAID-0 to recover data.
If a disk in a RAID 0 volume dies, the data on every disk in the array is essentially destroyed because all the files are striped; if a drive in a JBOD set dies then it may be easier to recover the files on the other drives (but then again, it might not, depending on how the operating system manages the disks.) Considering that you should be doing regular backups regardless, and that even under JBOD recovery can be difficult
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I manage a good number of servers with RAID and I have RAID on my own tower and I can tell you that if it is fault tolerance you want, you better be keeping a live backup of that JBOD span. Even I have a live backup of my RAID-5 so in theory I would have to lose two drives in my RAID-5 and my backup drive to lose all of my data. (That's 3 of 4 hard drives that need to fail before something bad happens and I even have a spare drive in case one does fail.) IMHO that is the way to use multiple disks. I don't know how important your data is to you but I have projects, my financial records, and a lot of pictures of my family on my computer, and I will be damned if I lose any of it. :)
 
Ok I will build Raid 5 altough dont know how to do it :) Now I have vertex 3 120 gb ssd so windows and some CAD programs will be installed ssd. My games will be installed on 1 tb hdd. For raid 5 I have to buy two 3 tb hdd more right? And I will have three 3 tb disc on raid 5 system and one of these disc will be used for backup files so I will have 2x3 tb 6 tb total raid 5 storage? Did I get everything correctly?
 
mertov said:
Ok I will build Raid 5 altough dont know how to do it :) Now I have vertex 3 120 gb ssd so windows and some CAD programs will be installed ssd. My games will be installed on 1 tb hdd. For raid 5 I have to buy two 3 tb hdd more right? And I will have three 3 tb disc on raid 5 system and one of these disc will be used for backup files so I will have 2x3 tb 6 tb total raid 5 storage? Did I get everything correctly?
Click to expand...

Yes and no, I personally would use the 3TB as backup and buy two or three more 1tb drives so you have 2-3Tb of redundancy, that way you can backup both your SSD and RAID with the 3TB drive. This really depends on the number of SATA ports you have available to your mobo's RAID controller though.

RAID-5 is like RAID-0 except every stripe has a block called the "parity block" which stores information about the other blocks written, so if any drive fails, the controller can re-create your data from the extra parity data that RAID-5 stores. You're total RAID size is: (Size of the smallest disk - 1) * n where n is the number of disks in your RAID-5. You can safely lose 1 drive with RAID-5. RAID-6 has two parity drives, RAID-1 can lose all drives except one (since it mirrors,) and nested raid levels depends on which drives fail.

Keep in mind, that if you have mission critical data, you don't want a single point of failure. Using the RAID-5 with 1TB disks and using the 3TB as backup will give you 3 points that have to fail before you lose your data on your RAID-5, and 2 points if you SSD fails. That way if something explodes, your stuff is intact.

Buying just 1 more 3Tb drive and running RAID-1 would give you redundancy but no more storage. It's just a copy of what you have already (but it does it on the fly.)

What you end up doing is up to you. RAID tends to cost more because you need more drives and I'm not sure how critical your data is. Also, I would make sure that your motherboard supports RAID-5. Most modern boards support RAID-5 in FakeRAID (motherboard raid, it actually offloads RAID commands to the CPU, which is a relatively easy task for any modern CPU.)
 
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