Last minute advice needed on RAID0 + partition size

[shevanel]

My hdd's are expected to arrive today and this is what I hope to do.

uninstall 7200.11

install both Samsung F3's on sata port 0/1

enable raid in bios

set optical drive as 1st boot device

save and exit with windows 7 disk inserted

begin boot from cd

f6 for raid options

set stripe size to 128

partition to taste

format/install

Ive never done the RAId thing and just wondering if I am on the right track?

Also, does anyone know how to determine a partition size and how to get the volume to be as close to a rounded number as possible?

Thanks for any info

 

[diesel700]

Anything after XP you don't need F6. It will be CTRL I, on an Intel board (IIRC) to set up raid and strip size and that option comes up (quickly) after the first post info screen.

You must set the drives to RAID in the Bios, rather than IDE or AHCI, but you know that already.

 

[shevanel]

thanks for the tip, those drives should be here any minute!

 

[diesel700]

You can have a RAID 0 partition across two drives of say 200gb for arguments sakes, then have the rest in Raid 1, the Intel setups let you do that. That way, you can have the speed of RAID 0 for OS and even have a backup image and your data on the RAID 1 which will be mirrored in case of drive failure, unlike the RAID 0.

If you search for and download the Intel Storage Matrix program you can do thinks like check the integrity of your data on the RAID 1 partition on boot and repair any errors, sometimes these can occur if your PC crashes such as when you run software by firms like Apple or Adobe (LOL).

 

[shevanel]

wow that sounds like a really good idea. Im going to look into it but let me ask about how techinial/difficult it is to setup?

I was thinking 250gb for OS/Boot partition and a 375gb partition for Movies and a 225 gb partition for music and the remaining 150 or so for whatever.

So in the raid setup it will have the options to do that and use RAID0 on the 250gb os/boot and raid 1 on the rest? what stripe size should i use for the OS/boot?

 

[diesel700]

Personally I wouldn't use RAID 0 at all, since it increases the chance of losing your OS setup if one drives gets sick (or even dies). This happened to me once with two WD drives and its not much fun. Acronis wouldn't clone back the image I made onto the new replacement drive I added either.

I found much more benefit in having a drive for OS and then having a page file (pagefile.sys) on another drive and a temporary drive on the same drive, and then putting data on this drive too but in another partition.

But its not hard to set up raid, would stick with 128 stripe size. It lets you set up RAID 0 to whatever size then configure RAID 1 on the other partition.

Why do you need to have music and movies on separate partitions ? Just stick all your pics, movies, whatever in the same partition, just not the same one as the OS and make is RAID 1, that way if your drive dies, you will lose your OS but not your data.

I would add that if you are doing things that rely on writing large temporary files to disk, like Photoshop does (even with boat loads of ram and 64bit), having two separate drives is quicker than RAID in that instance, believe it or not.

The OS sits on one drive and runs the program and you tell Photoshop to use the other drive as a Scratch drive and it writes mega huge bloated files of millions of GB's onto the spare drive, this sparing clogging up the OS drive.

 

[shevanel]

I just like the way it looks to have each volume labled Music, Movies, etc

I'm not too worried about losing OS files if the raid0 part. fails.. having the movies and music on the other partitions would be what i need plus I have a 500GB I will use as a backup drive for my movies/music just incase.

I usually re-install windows 7 every 60 days on a boot partition on a single drive. I like to keep things fresh and clean + I always change out hardware as part of the hobby so most of the time Im wiping the Os anyway.

I'm looking to gain the hdd speed that raid0 might offer compared to a single drive and to have my movies and music safely stored and the Raid0 on boot and the raid1 on the rest seems like a dream come true. I really appreciate you giving that info.. Im really anxious to get these drives now.

I only use my pc for gaming, music, movies and websurfing.. i do not do any photshop stuff, sometimes i encode fraps vids to post on youtube and thats about it really.

 

[diesel700]

Once you have set up your raid disks, use the spare 500gb to have a pagefile on and also to use when recording fraps videos, fraps is better when you record to a drive that the game isn't using.

 

[shevanel]

Once you have set up your raid disks, use the spare 500gb to have a pagefile on and also to use when recording fraps videos, fraps is better when you record to a drive that the game isn't using.

Also, I have the 500gb hdd in here now and do I just simply connect it after the raid/new os is installed so I can grab all my files off before I rma it or do i need to setup additional drives in the raid settings?

I'm not sure what you mean by pagefile.sys.. and with the fraps comment I never really considered that the hdd affects the recording btu you know what... whenever i record on this dying hdd its really obvious now that the hdd plays a big part becuase I had to quit doing videos because the choppyness was unbearable

santa just came.. lets do this!

 

[shevanel]

im up and running but i did not partition the other volume into raid1, i just did 265gb for raid 0 and now i cannot see the other space of the hdd... probbaly bec. its not formatted but i am trying to remember how to do it lol

 

[diesel700]

Unless you go back to the Ctrl I at boot bit, and set it to raid 1 it won't work.

 

[shevanel]

okay cool I understand. I didnt do it because i wasnt aware it was cutting the remaining volume in half. about 336gb left. I'll set the raid 1 up anyway

lol old hdd was WEI 5.9 with the raid its only 6.0 I was hoping for a little bit more of a score lol

Im going to do a few benches on the raid0 and then setup the raid1

I am getting an error at boot though that says ACHI port 5 error then it boots

In disk management I have the 365 gb of unallocated drive, do i right click and use simple volume or start new mirroed volume?

 

[shevanel]

so what do you think? looks about average? Seems fast to me.

 

[diesel700]

Loks good, try HDtach though (need to set it for compatability with XP SP) it measures burst rate more accurately.

 

[shevanel]

i right click the unallocated 365gb raid1 setup and chose format as simple drive. i tried doing it as the mirror option but the "next" button wouldnt activate, is this correct?

 

[diesel700]

Have you rebooted and set up raid 1 in Ctrl I ?

 

[shevanel]

yes i did and its now showing up in win7 after setting up in disk management as 365 gb

when transferring files from the 3rd non raid hdd @ 55mb/s to the raid1 partition should my entire computer feel like its 500mhz? Its bogged down

thanks for all your help

Is there anything I should do now besides defrag to keep this raid heathy? And where is the backup img for the mirror raid?

 

[PaulieG]

I just setup my first Raid 0 too. I did Raid 0 with 200GB, then Raid 1 with the remaining partition. The Raid 0 partition is recognized, but the other partition does not show up in win 7. What gives?

What's really weird is HD Tach does recognized the Raid 1 partition. WTF???

 

[shevanel]

you need to go into disk management and format the unallocated 2nd raid into ntfs and then it should be good to go. hd tach sees it because its there, it just isnt usable to win 7 until its been formatted and allocated to ntfs file system.

for the sake of cache/reference, right click on "computer" chose manage then look for disk management on the left. go in there and find the "unallocated" partition

i know you know this but just incase someone ever needs to know