Multiple raid configurations on a single set of drives?

[rojito]

Except I want mine to look like this:

Hey man, I'm very interested in your idea, I have 2 x 160gb HD's and would like to do something like that. When you get it done, would you be so kind of making a "how to GUIDE"?

 

[SomeJoe7777]

My question is this: Isn't raid 1 supposed to give you higher read performance? if that is so, wouldn't it be more useful to have your os and important data in raid 1 (since there isn't much writing in it) and make a small partition of raid 0 only for processing data (like video or audio) and non important or temporary files?

Higher-end RAID-1 controllers (like from 3Ware or LSI) can speed up RAID-1 reads by intelligently distributing the read commands to the drive whose head is nearest to the desired data; can split and interleave read requests to gather data from the drives simultaneously; and can use their large on-board caches to improve read and write performance.

However, to my knowledge, the Intel ICH7R and ICH8 controllers are not intelligent enough to do any of that, and don't have any on-board cache. I believe the read and write speeds from the ICH7R in RAID-1 will be close to that of a single drive, although you'll need a benchmark to be sure.

How does the Intel controller rebuild an array? Say you had a failure and you replaced the drive. The next time you boot up, do you hit CTRL-I (or whatever the key stroke is to enter the Intel Storage Matrix) when booting and select a repair option?

If that was the case, you could rebuild the array. Then switch the boot drive to D, boot into the backed up OS, copy the backup back to C and then reboot into C. I'm not familiar with BartPE / DriveImage XML. I guess I was using a bootable D / backup instead where you would use BartPE...

I really only wanted to make recovery of a failure quicker than re-installing everything...

Yes, once the new drive is installed after failure, the Intel controller will begin rebuilding the array as soon as you go into the BIOS using Ctrl-I and tell it that the new drive will be used for the rebuild.

You could, if you wanted to, make the D: drive bootable to a base installation of Windows with DriveImage XML (or whatever other imaging program you want) on it such that you could boot to D: and then restore C: from the backup image. However, I think the BartPE CD-ROM is easier. You can build one in about 20 minutes from your Windows XP CD-ROM and write it to a CD-R. The BartPE is an implementation of the Windows Pre-Installation environment, which allows some Windows programs (including the DriveImage XML plug-in) to run. If the DriveImage XML plug-in is built into the BartPE CD-ROM when you make it, you'll be able to restore your system very quickly without having to install Windows to D:.

One thing you may want to consider is a motherboard failure. This takes out your RAID controller, leaving the RAID-0 and RAID-1 logical drives inaccessible. To get your data off the RAID-1 logical drive, you would have to either 1) Find another motherboard with an Intel ICH7R or ICH8 (fortunately these are plentiful right now, but not necessarily in the future), or 2) prepare to use drive recovery software like GetDataBack. I'm pretty sure GetDataBack could find the partition on the RAID-1 logical drive (using either physical drive) and recover your files from there.

 

[rojito]

is it possible to make two different RAIDs on two HDs if you have Gigabyte 965-S3? I believe its RAID controller is gigabyte's not intel, so it won't be using intel matrix
If affirmative, HOW?

 

[SomeJoe7777]

is it possible to make two different RAIDs on two HDs if you have Gigabyte 965-S3? I believe its RAID controller is gigabyte's not intel, so it won't be using intel matrix
If affirmative, HOW?

If the controller is not Intel's Matrix controller, then probably no. Most of the other on-board RAID controllers I've seen (Silicon Image, JMicron, etc.) don't support multiple arrays on the same drives.

 

[rojito]

is it possible to make two different RAIDs on two HDs if you have Gigabyte 965-S3? I believe its RAID controller is gigabyte's not intel, so it won't be using intel matrix
If affirmative, HOW?

If the controller is not Intel's Matrix controller, then probably no. Most of the other on-board RAID controllers I've seen (Silicon Image, JMicron, etc.) don't support multiple arrays on the same drives.

Damm... My controller is JMicron...

Do you know where can I get a really good idea (preferably with numbers in it and not theoretical) of how much performance increase will I get using RAID 0 instead of a single solution? I'm interested mainly in windows boot time, apps loading and video editing.

Thanks

 

[jethrodesign]

Hi, I finally found a couple EXCELLENT articles on the performance of different RAID schemes, AND the performance comparisons of Intel Matrix RAID.

Check them out here:
Chipset RAID Compared

Intel Matrix RAID

This answered a LOT of questions I had comparing different options possible. It looks like the clear winner in performance w/ security is RAID 10, which I believe this MOBO supports. And it appears that Intel Matrix RAID offers very similar performance to a regular RAID setup.

Let us know what you decide to try. A lot of folks may try a similar motherboard/storage combination.