[SOLVED] How to reformat/setup RAID in a futureproof way?

[DavidSchwegler]

Hey,

I had set my drives up via Intel RST years ago, not through the bios, and was happy for a long time. However, the Intel RST app stopped supporting my motherboard (Asrock z77 extreme), and broke access to one of my drives in the process of trying to roll it back to a supported version, creating quite the disaster.

I'm upgrading my motherboard soon, and am not sure whether I'm even going to buy Intel or AMD. How should I go about setting up RAID in a more future-proof way, so I have an easy transition to a new motherboard? I'm not even sure how to reformat the Intel RST-controlled drives. Perhaps Intel RST is still the way to go, and I just need to upgrade the motherboard before doing anything, I'm open to all recommendations!

Currently I have 3 drives

• SSD (not raid)
• Intel RST-controlled SSD in RAID 1
• Intel RST-controlled HDD in RAID 1

Thanks!

 

[kanewolf]

Buy a standalone RAID controller card. Then the drives and controller card go as a unit.

 

[popatim]

I remember that thread 🙁

The only future proofing you can do, imo, is get into a good backup routine. Technology marches on & old tech gets left behind. Using a controller isn't a bad idea and buying newer gen ones will hold you over many years. It's what i use. But getting data off isn't as straight forward since real raid controllers don't use formats windows can read natively.

Raid is meant to keep you up if a drive fails and is not meant to act as a backup. For example, I have nearly 8tb filled on my 16tb server and you bet all the important stuff is backed up. Several times.



Is it cheap - no.
Do you have to - yes.

 

[DavidSchwegler]

You have more the 1 drive in each raid 1, right?

Yes, sorry, 2 ssds, and 2 hdds.

 

[DavidSchwegler]

Buy a standalone RAID controller card. Then the drives and controller card go as a unit.

Thanks for the response, that makes sense!

I'm getting the impression from reading forums that Intel RST is "fake raid" managed by the motherboard, and that anything else is preferable.

1. How do I convert my Intel RST drives to be managed by a controller card? Is there a way to remove Intel RST from them? Do I need to do some reformatting or...?
2. Let's say I alternatively setup Windows 10 and use its Storage Spaces feature (sounds like it has a pretty good reputation for home use). If I have another drive booting to Windows 7, will the Storage Spaces drives be unrecognizable to Win 7? I assume if I ever had to reinstall Windows 10, I'd also lose the raid configuration and be in a pickle?

 

[DavidSchwegler]

Actually, it looks like maybe what I should do is get rid of the whole raid setup and just setup automated backups.

I still need to know how to get out of the situation where the drives have intel rst on them, though haha.

 

[USAFRet]

1. Why RAID?
2. Of what array type?
3. What is your backup routine?
4. Do you absolutely know how to recover your data from a disaster of whatever type?

 

[popatim]

First thing you need to do is get this data backed up. Anything will do, even dvd's if you have enough of them.

After you have a backup or three, removing iRST is no longer a concern since you can simply reformat the drives and reload the data.
I haven't done this in a long time But iRST will (it used to at least) preserve the data if there is only 1 volume on the array, when you break it. I would not proceed without first making a backup or pulling one drive out beforehand for recovery purposes.

 

[DavidSchwegler]

1. Why RAID?
2. Of what array type?
3. What is your backup routine?
4. Do you absolutely know how to recover your data from a disaster of whatever type?

First thing you need to do is get this data backed up. Anything will do, even dvd's if you have enough of them.

RAID 1, the original purpose was to not have to worry about a drive dying and having to losing everything. I realize RAID isn't a replacement for data backups. Everything is backed up manually to an external drive at the moment, though there isn't a regular process for that. I also plan on setting up some online storage for the things I absolutely can't lose.

How much stress would it be on SSDs/HDDs, if I setup a daily process to copy terabytes of data to an external HDD?

I haven't done this in a long time But iRST will (it used to at least) preserve the data if there is only 1 volume on the array, when you break it.

Yeah that was my understanding too, and was why I was using it. Avoiding the scenario where I have to stop everything and re-setup my whole hard drive/os, program settings, etc, if my drive died. Maybe it's not worthwhile though.

After you have a backup or three, removing iRST is no longer a concern since you can simply reformat the drives and reload the data.

Cool. Is removing one drive at a time the way to "break" the raid to reformat them to remove iRST? As it is, I haven't found a way to view each drive in the RAID independently to format.

Thanks!!

 

[USAFRet]

How much stress would it be on SSDs/HDDs, if I setup a daily process to copy terabytes of data to an external HDD?

You don't even have to copy terabytes every day.
Read up on Incremental and Differential backups.

Start with a Full Image, and then only the changes to the data since that Full Image.
Macrium Refect does this natively.

My C drive is ~200GB consumed space.
A daily Incremental might be 2-3GB.
To recover, all those intervening Incrementals get rolled into the most recent Full Image.

What is your backup situation at home? What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong... forums.tomshardware.com

 

[DavidSchwegler]

Macrium Refect does this natively.

Does Macrium keep the file structure in tact, so I could can retrieve files ad-hoc, or can you only access them through its software?

 

[USAFRet]

Does Macrium keep the file structure in tact, so I could can retrieve files ad-hoc, or can you only access them through its software?

You can mount an Image as a drive letter, but you do have to use their software.
I've used it multiple times, and it is pretty seamless.

Retrieve one or more individual files, from whichever Image.
As in..."the copy of my resume when I saved it last Thursday."

 

[DavidSchwegler]

You can mount an Image as a drive letter, but you do have to use their software.
I've used it multiple times, and it is pretty seamless.

Retrieve one or more individual files, from whichever Image.
As in..."the copy of my resume when I saved it last Thursday."

I don't feel super comfortable relying on a particular software for my backups. I do think the backup image could be useful to handle the scenario where my hard drive croaks all of the sudden, but I'd also like the ability to just backup directories...sort of like robocopy /mir does. Macrium and EaseUS and both only use an image that requires using their software to view. Aomei Backupper seems like it can do both... seems like it has good reviews, have you heard of it?

 

[USAFRet]

For individual files and folders, in the original format, I've used SyncToy and FreeFile Sync in the past.

I've heard of the AOEMI tool, never used it.
A bootable Macrium Rescue USB grants access to the fulll functionality.

 

[DavidSchwegler]

First thing you need to do is get this data backed up. Anything will do, even dvd's if you have enough of them.

After you have a backup or three, removing iRST is no longer a concern since you can simply reformat the drives and reload the data.
I haven't done this in a long time But iRST will (it used to at least) preserve the data if there is only 1 volume on the array, when you break it. I would not proceed without first making a backup or pulling one drive out beforehand for recovery purposes.

Hey popatim, not sure you saw my question.

Is removing one drive at a time the way to "break" the raid to reformat them to remove iRST? As it is, I haven't found a way to view each drive in the RAID independently to format.

Thanks!

 

[popatim]

Irst has a Break Array option of you right click on the array in the manage tab.
But yes you can remove a drive and then use irst to 'break' the array.

 

[DavidSchwegler]

Irst has a Break Array option of you right click on the array in the manage tab.
But yes you can remove a drive and then use irst to 'break' the array.

Thanks for the reply. My motherboard doesn't support IRST anymore so I can't access the Break Array option, but I think I've solved it the more nuclear way.

I've booted to my old Win 7 (non-raid) drive, done a clean on the raid "drive" in diskpart.exe, then installed Windows 10 on the now-unallocated disk 1 from a USB stick. Then, since that install doesn't know about IRST, I can use it to clean and format disk 2.

I'm going to format my old Windows 7 OS drive now too so I don't accidentally boot to it and have it think my newly reformatted Windows 10 drives are in IRST and corrupt them (already made that mistake once today haha). Farewell, Windows 7, you were a great OS overall!

 

[DSzymborski]

I've gotten good results using Bvckup 2 for all my incremental backups to two separate PCs every morning at 7 AM.

Generally speaking, I only recommend any kind of RAID solution when you have a problem that requires RAID. And for most consumers, those are rare.