Question RAID inquiry

mtracy1991

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Hi all,

I currently have (4) 12TB drives.
My ideal situation is running them redundantly in two pair of RAID 1.
I also have a 240GB SSD that runs my OS.
I cannot boot into Windows after changing AHCI to RAID within the BIOS.

1) Is there a workaround for booting into Windows as AHCI on my SSD and keeping my drives set to RAID 1?

2) Is RAID 1 the best path in terms of redundancy at this time with the 4 drives?

Looking for suggestions on how my SSD OS can co-exist with RAID enabled.

Thanks in advance.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
This will be used for data that needs to be running 24/7 pretty much.
The real backup plan would be backing up data weekly/biweekly onto additional drives.
RAID 1 is only good for physical drive redundancy....continued uptime in the event of a dead drive.
And then, only until you can take the system down to replace the drive and rebuild the array.

In the consumer space, RAID of any type is rarely needed.


But to your question, you'd need to rebuild the whole system with the RAID in mind from the start.
You can't switch the current SSD from AHCI to RAID without a reinstall.
 
An option if you cannot absolutely for some reason reinstall Windows is to use software based RAID via either Windows Storage Spaces or a traditional software RAID. See https://www.pugetsystems.com/support/guides/configuring-software-raid-within-windows-10-2124/ You could also get an add-in RAID card. Although I recommend watching this:

However if these drives are meant to be some sort of data vault of high value data, I'd advise not using Windows unless you have something you absolutely need that only runs on Windows. Instead, I would suggest an OS package that supports either ZFS or btrfs.
 
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mtracy1991

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An option if you cannot absolutely for some reason reinstall Windows is to use software based RAID via either Windows Storage Spaces or a traditional software RAID. See https://www.pugetsystems.com/support/guides/configuring-software-raid-within-windows-10-2124/ You could also get an add-in RAID card. Although I recommend watching this:

However if these drives are meant to be some sort of data vault of high value data, I'd advise not using Windows unless you have something you absolutely need that only runs on Windows. Instead, I would suggest an OS package that supports either ZFS or btrfs.
Going to be using the data on my drives for a plex server pretty much; movies, audio, etc.
Multiple people will be using this.
 

mtracy1991

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That it's for 24/7 data use means there's kind of a path to RAID not being the worst idea ever, and that's fairly unusual for consumer builds! Can you give us some information as to the amount of data that drives are needing to transfer quickly?
IT mentality kicked in... forgive me.

I'd like to keep things running fine without the issue of losing data.

I was going to do weekly backups onto outside hard drives.

But in the case of unforeseen circumstances I'd like to have something in place where I can swap out a drive and the data can be rebuilt.
 

DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Honestly, with this kind of data, a RAID is kind of pointless, I was thinking more of a workstation in which you might be working with terabytes of data off-site or maybe editing raw 4K video or something.

For watching movies and audio, a RAID is unnecessary and thus, there's far more downside than upside. With something like this, simply having an extra one-to-one copy of the drive, that's updated daily or weekly with delta copying so that only new/changed files are updated and keeps an archive of changed/deleted files for a month for emergencies (Bvckup 2 is one that does this very simply), is a much simpler, more elegant solution.
 
Going to be using the data on my drives for a plex server pretty much; movies, audio, etc.
Multiple people will be using this.
While you can use Windows, I'd argue using either TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault would be better for this. And if data loss or at least bit-rot is a concern, either OS supports ZFS and at least OMV supports btrfs.

EDIT:
I realized the wording regarding ZFS or btrfs makes it sound like they're immune to issues. They're not. But they implement features that minimize data corruption issues. In addition, the file systems won't happily give you garbage data and say there's nothing wrong with it. Basically, you get what you asked for, and if there's a problem, you won't get the file.
 
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There is another possible issue not mentioned yet. Is those HDD of SMR type? If yes, there is the potential of bad performance when putting SMR drives in raid volumes.

Now, I get that Linux is kind of not what you want to do, but using a file system like BTRFS gives the option of just adding the HDD into a large storage volume. The nice thing here is that you can have it set up in such a way that the file system tree can exist on multiple disks at the same time, meaning if one hdd fails, only the file data on that hdd is lost. I haven't experience a faulty hdd in my own setups yet, so I haven't get it tested for myself.
 
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mtracy1991

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While you can use Windows, I'd argue using either TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault would be better for this. And if data loss or at least bit-rot is a concern, either OS supports ZFS and at least OMV supports btrfs.

EDIT:
I realized the wording regarding ZFS or btrfs makes it sound like they're immune to issues. They're not. But they implement features that minimize data corruption issues. In addition, the file systems won't happily give you garbage data and say there's nothing wrong with it. Basically, you get what you asked for, and if there's a problem, you won't get the file.

I will look into this. I'm not familiar with TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault.

My current gaming rig hosts the server along with the plethora of drives.

I have another rig in the attic that will be used.
 

mtracy1991

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There is another possible issue not mentioned yet. Is those HDD of SMR type? If yes, there is the potential of bad performance when putting SMR drives in raid volumes.

Now, I get that Linux is kind of not what you want to do, but using a file system like BTRFS gives the option of just adding the HDD into a large storage volume. The nice thing here is that you can have it set up in such a way that the file system tree can exist on multiple disks at the same time, meaning if one hdd fails, only the file data on that hdd is lost. I haven't experience a faulty hdd in my own setups yet, so I haven't get it tested for myself.

Negative ghost rider, these are WD 12TB drives.

Not familiar with Linux, but willing to definitely learn and using the BTRFS seems ideal.

"you can have it set up in such a way that the file system tree can exist on multiple disks at the same time, meaning if one hdd fails, only the file data on that hdd is lost."

So from what I grasp out of this, I can run my (4) 12TB drives mirrored and if one fails, the other three will possess the same data, correct?
Curious how the mirroring works with this and how the file system is continuously updated.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
"you can have it set up in such a way that the file system tree can exist on multiple disks at the same time, meaning if one hdd fails, only the file data on that hdd is lost."

So from what I grasp out of this, I can run my (4) 12TB drives mirrored and if one fails, the other three will possess the same data, correct?
Curious how the mirroring works with this and how the file system is continuously updated.
No.

The "file tree" survives. Info about what is where.
The 'data' that exists on a dead drive is gone.

My opinion:

2 of these drives with your data.
The other two, as a regularly updated full backup. Daily, weekly, whatever. Automated, hands off.


But in the grand scheme of things, physical drive fail is only one pathway to lost data.
An actual second/third copy elsewhere is how you protect that data.

A RAID 1 or similar is if downtime == actual lost money.
And a RAID 1 also needs a real backup, to protect the data against accidental deletion, corruption, etc, etc.
 
So from what I grasp out of this, I can run my (4) 12TB drives mirrored and if one fails, the other three will possess the same data, correct?
Curious how the mirroring works with this and how the file system is continuously updated.
No, I don't think this applies to mirrored volumes. I'm not sure, but as I remember, the backup of metadata can only occur when not using striped raid.

Btw: Hearing often other people says zfs is very mature, but haven't looked into this myself (and yes it's absolutely on my todo-list) - most because zfs is ment for occupying the whole disk, i.e. not in a partition smaller than the hdd size like other file systems.