Question Setting up a RAID1 accessible from both Linux and Windows

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Dec 2, 2022
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This topic has been discussed many times, but i didn't find anything specific to my situation.
I would like to create a RAID1 with 2 sata drives (same brand, model,capacity). My objective is to have this raid accessible from both Windows and Ubuntu, wich are located in 2 other separate drives. So i am not trying to boot from the raid, i am just using it for storing data. I know that the easy solution would be to go for a real raid controller card, but im trying to find out if it is really necessary to spend more money. As for the software raid option, for what i've understood you can't do such a thing and make it accessible from both linux and windows, but correct me if im wrong.
So now i am thinking about doing it using the built-in motherboard controller, but every discussion i've read comes to the conclusion that you shouldn't do it because:
1 - If you change motherboard you won't be sure your next hardware is gonna read the data.
2 - motherboard implementations of raid usually use CPU resources.
3 - motherboard implementations usually dont have powerloss safety features, and this could mess up the data.

My questions are:
1 - Are statements (1) and (3) true also if you have a RAID1 configuration? I am saying this beacuse since it is just a straight copy i would assume the way the data is written isn't that cryptic and i can read it easily if one of the 2 corrupts(or if i change motherboard).
2 - Do all motherboards do this "fake" raid? In my case on the manufacturer site explicitly says that it supports RAID 0, 1 and 10.
3 - Is there a better way to achieve what I am trying to do?

My motherboard : https://it.msi.com/Motherboard/B450-GAMING-PRO-CARBON-MAX-WIFI/Specification

Thanks in advance
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
What do you mean? Why is it not?
A RAID 1 is for continued uptime in the event of a physical drive fault, not data protection.

The user and the OS sees but one copy of any data.
Accidental deletion, ransomware, whatever....it is gone, just as if it were on just one physical drive.

A RAID 1 is useful if you absolutely need continued uptime. Say, if you are running a webstore, and downtime = lost sales.
And any RAID 1 still needs a true backup scenario.
 
Dec 2, 2022
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What i need is to be 100% sure that if 1 fails i can still have the data. I thought that for "data protection" you meant that.
I'm not worried about this:
Accidental deletion, ransomware, whatever....
Im worried that if 1 drive breaks than i will lose all my work. I am currently using it to build a software wich i modify multiple times a day. I could do just backups, yes, but i would need to do it undreds of times a day, and thats kind of annoying. But if you have any suggestion i will happily take it.
 
Back to your original question. Hardware RAID (REAL hardware RAID, on a separate controller card, not that fake RAID provided by motherboards) is the only way to do this with any hope of reliability. Windows and Linux both do software RAID in ways that are not compatible between them.

And, before doing this have a backup plan in place and tested. RAID is, as stated above NOT a backup.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
What i need is to be 100% sure that if 1 fails i can still have the data. I thought that for "data protection" you meant that.
I'm not worried about this: Im worried that if 1 drive breaks than i will lose all my work. I am currently using it to build a software wich i modify multiple times a day. I could do just backups, yes, but i would need to do it undreds of times a day, and thats kind of annoying. But if you have any suggestion i will happily take it.
Given these requirements, I'd do something like this:

4 bay dedicated NAS. QNAP or Synology
Drive 1 + 2 - RAID 1.
This is your primary working space

Drive 3 - Backup of the RAID array. On whatever schedule you deem necessary. Daily, every 6 hours, whatever. Hands off automated.
Syn and QNAP has this function built in.

Drive 4 - System drive and possibly other storage


This gives you the dedicated hardware RAID, Windows/Linux/Android accessibility, automated backup, and a host of other things you don't yet know you need.
 
As the others have said, you can't do this with software driven RAID and I haven't seen a quality implementation of ZFS on windows yet. And since you want then to actually see each others files, you need them presented in a common format like CIFS so yeah a NAS device is probably your best bet. And as both of my counterparts have said, disk redundancy is not a backup solution, it just protects incase a drive fails. If your data is critical enough that you are worried about losing it to a drive failure, then you need to worry about it losing it to malware or user error. Get a backup solution that's backing up every day or week or whatever you feel is comfortable with.
 
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