My poor choice of RAID 5

bruche007bruche007 Baja & Canada
edited March 2009 in Hardware
On the advice of a friend; I have installed My my operating system on a software based raid 5 with all my applications and been fighting a losing battle with it ever since. I now understand the folly of it and my question is can I convert the OS and APPS to a single drive without doing a complete new install. I have a clean drive to write to, if it is possible. It seems to me the only thing RAID5, without a hardware controller is good for is, MP3S or JPEGS

Comments

  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    You can move your programs with Application Mover. The OS may be a bit more difficult. You could try and see if a ghosting software (Acronis TrueImage or Norton Ghost) will allow you to do it from within the OS. If you can't I don't think it's possible. Software RAID doesn't really work outside of the OS and you can't convert back.
  • bruche007bruche007 Baja & Canada
    edited March 2009
    Thanks Hawk. I was afraid this would be the case. I have been reading posts By Tex. He seems to be the real expert when it comes to issues about raids. He made it painfully clear why I have been suffering the misery I have been suffering with this set-up. I had already been considering Acronis TrueImage but I imagine it works by reading a single disk. I shall give it a whirl and hope for the best. The next problem I guess will be verfing my copy of windows.
  • bruche007bruche007 Baja & Canada
    edited March 2009
    Problem solved: If any one makes the same mistake I did of putting your OS on raid5 set-up you can use Acronis true image to migrate the whole works (operating system, applications & files) to a different drive and start over without having to re-install anything. Acronis Is very strait forward. an idiot can use and one just did. I'm stoked!!!
  • ZuntarZuntar North Carolina Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    bruche007 wrote:
    Problem solved: If any one makes the same mistake I did of putting your OS on raid5 set-up you can use Acronis true image to migrate the whole works (operating system, applications & files) to a different drive and start over without having to re-install anything. Acronis Is very strait forward. an idiot can use and one just did. I'm stoked!!!

    Spectacular!! Not that I will ever use a raid 5 for an OS, but nice to know there is an out!:cool:
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited March 2009
    If any one makes the same mistake I did of putting your OS on raid5 set-up you can use Acronis true image to migrate the whole works (operating system, applications & files) to a different drive
    When I was less experienced and foolish (or even more foolish than now) and running RAID 0 on cheap motherboard RAID chips, I would routinely image complete systems on RAID 0 to single drives. I also imaged backups on to blank RAID 0 arrays.

    Concerning RAID: many of us here have been trying to impress people that RAID, for the majority of home uses, is a toy with not much benefit. In the case of RAID 0, it's just flat out silly as it doubles the risk of losing data.
  • radzer0radzer0
    edited March 2009
    Bruche... which raid card were you using? I got a areca in my home computer with 4 of those seagate 1.5tb drives. The ones with crapo firmware. Never had any problems running it raid 5 with anything.

    Leonardo... IMO, raid 0 in a home computer with regular home use hard drives id say is 4x more risky to loose data. Specialy in the case of maybe windows update running and a drive failure. If it writes to one drive and not the other it coudl totaly screw windows past being able to start.
  • bruche007bruche007 Baja & Canada
    edited March 2009
    I have an asus A8NSLI premium Motherboard that has a software based raid (sil3114) built right on it. The problem with these motherboard raids is they put all the load on the cpu and in the case of raid5 slow the machine to a crawl. You should read the posts by Tex. He is clearly very experienced with all forms of raid setups and their advantages and disadvantages. Reading threads by him made it all too clear to me why i was having the grief I was having. Now that the price of hard drives has dropped to nothing, compared to what they cost just 5 years ago, it is very difficult to make a case for using raid setups at all in a home application. Ram has also become so cheap that applications don't rely on virtual memory as much either, now that most mobos are capable of accepting 8 gigs of RAM. In any case my advice to anyone considering a raid setup would be: 1 avoid any software based raid and spring for a hardware based controller and 2 keep your operating system on a separate drive so if you do have problems you don't have to reload all your files and they are the reason you would be considering a raid setup in the first place. Mantra for today backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup
  • bruche007bruche007 Baja & Canada
    edited March 2009
    radzer0 wrote:
    Bruche... which raid card were you using? I got a areca in my home computer with 4 of those seagate 1.5tb drives. The ones with crapo firmware. Never had any problems running it raid 5 with anything.

    Leonardo... IMO, raid 0 in a home computer with regular home use hard drives id say is 4x more risky to loose data. Specialy in the case of maybe windows update running and a drive failure. If it writes to one drive and not the other it coudl totaly screw windows past being able to start.

    I am a raid zero guy from now on I mean zero raids on my systems
  • radzer0radzer0
    edited March 2009
    bruche007 wrote:
    I have an asus A8NSLI premium Motherboard that has a software based raid (sil3114) built right on it. The problem with these motherboard raids is they put all the load on the cpu and in the case of raid5 slow the machine to a crawl. You should read the posts by Tex. He is clearly very experienced with all forms of raid setups and their advantages and disadvantages. Reading threads by him made it all too clear to me why i was having the grief I was having. Now that the price of hard drives has dropped to nothing, compared to what they cost just 5 years ago, it is very difficult to make a case for using raid setups at all in a home application. Ram has also become so cheap that applications don't rely on virtual memory as much either, now that most mobos are capable of accepting 8 gigs of RAM. In any case my advice to anyone considering a raid setup would be: 1 avoid any software based raid and spring for a hardware based controller and 2 keep your operating system on a separate drive so if you do have problems you don't have to reload all your files and they are the reason you would be considering a raid setup in the first place. Mantra for today backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup backup


    You sure you were using the sil raid chip and not the nvraid? NVRaid is known to have alot of problems with alot of things. Even just the drivers in a non raid system caused problems at one point.

    And by zero raids u means JBOD :)
  • bruche007bruche007 Baja & Canada
    edited March 2009
    radzer0 wrote:
    You sure you were using the sil raid chip and not the nvraid? NVRaid is known to have alot of problems with alot of things. Even just the drivers in a non raid system caused problems at one point.

    And by zero raids u means JBOD :)
    The board has both NVIDEA and Silcon Image on it and you got know which one you are using if you got as far as setting it up Loading drivers off a Floppy etc. I am, of course, certain, of the controller I was using
  • radzer0radzer0
    edited March 2009
    bruche007 wrote:
    The board has both NVIDEA and Silcon Image on it and you got know which one you are using if you got as far as setting it up Loading drivers off a Floppy etc. I am, of course, certain, of the controller I was using


    I had the same board for a few years. Replaced about a year ago with intel. I never had to load the sil drivers. Just the nvraid stuff in windows setup.


    But yea, on a side note. greenpower drive number 7 has failed. 83 hours on the clock.
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