Raid 5 Setup question

csiegle56

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I would like to create a raid 5 using a three drive array. The issue with this being that that my SATA ports are split into two different interfaces the first is a 4 port SATA3 from Asmedia a third party controller that does not support hardware raid which i would have used to save my other controller for SSD's. The second is the native Intel controller which is split up into 2 ports for SATA2 and another 2 for SATA3. I have always been under the assumption that uniformity while not necessarily needed in certain aspects of setting up RAID will usually save some headache and result in better performance and stability. Since I am using three drives they will have to be split up between these two interfaces which I always thought wasn't an option but must be since the board supports raid 1,5,10. My question being how will the board react to this will the 6Gb Intel ports just be put into a legacy type mode set at 3Gb or will the the 6Gb intel ports just be bottle-necked by the other interface? Let me know if you can find any other issues with this setup and let me know.
 
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Well if the whole SATA 2/3 is the issue you are having know this. Standard Hard Disk Drives still can't even use all the bandwith that SATA 2 offers. The real reason SATA 3 came along was for SSD's so don't even worry about the SATA 2/3 issue.

And as popatin said it would be better to go with a RAID 10 honestly if you have the space and ports. I setup a client orginally with 3 1TB's in a RAID 5. Shower than a turtle even though they were nice WD Reds. Then tossed in a 4th, made it a RAID 10 and BAM! getting 250-300 MB Read and write. Great thing about RAID 10 is you are able to have a drive fail in every RAID 1 (In your case it would be a RAID 0 or two RAID 1's and still keep on chugging along. You lose both drives in a RAID 1 then...
Usually if they are sata 2 and 3 ports they run off seperate controllers so doing a hardware raid is usually not possible. You can do a software raid 5. Set them up as a JBOD and then do a software raid 5. Only thing is i think you need the pro version of windows to do a raid 5.

Getting a seperate controller is best though. Hardware raid has less overhead and wont tax the cpu as much. Also please please PLEASE!! Get a 4th drive and set it up as a hot spare. You have no idea how many people lose all their data because they dont know what to do or dont pay attention when and how to change the hard drive in an already failing array. A hot spare will do that for you and you just remove the bad drive and it makes the new drive the hot spare.

Also what motherboard do you have?
 

csiegle56

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I suppose I am confused if the on-board Raid is truly hardware raid or just a means to identify the drive as being part of a raid array In UEFI for the purpose of configuring it in a low level environment. Looking up the sata controllers in the motherboard documentation lists the third party Asmedia controller under one section then two separate Sections for the Native Intel Z77 Controller with essentially the only difference being in the Header which lists one being 3Gb and another at 6Gb. Both say "if you installed Serial ATA hard disk drives, you can create a RAID 0,1,5, and 10 configuration with the Intel Rapid Storage technology through the onboard Intel z77 chipset." So you must be able to use ports from 3Gb and 6Gb but it might not necessarily be true hardware raid since like you said they are most likely two separate Intel controllers.

I don't really want to get a separate controller though because I already have 2 graphics cards and a sound card populating the PCI-E slots. I agree with you I don't want software raid because the drives I plan on using are already slow and I am fairly sure that software converts disk's into virtual drives making them even slower. Not to mention like you said a lot of people pull out the wrong drive and replace in causing the rebuild to be useless. With windows raid you have to sift through event logs just to find the sata port of the drive that failed which might not even correspond to how the manufacturer labels them. In rapid storage you can just look up the serial number and carefully take out each drive one at a time while the computer is off. This is why I am not to concerned about not having a spare. Not to mention like I said I at least want my system drive on an ssd to be on a native sata3 port.

If this is not possible or simply not a good idea to mix and match two interfaces I will just go with raid 1 and set up file history to backup the raid array since everything on the array is just data under a windows directory. I really dont want to lose 1/2 of my space in the array though so any tips you could give on this matter would be appreciated.

Z77 Maximus V Extreme
 

popatim

Titan
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The raid will run on only the intel ports. When you enable raid you will lose the sata3 speeds on those 2 ports and be dropped down to sata2.

Use the AsMedia to run your optical drive.

All motherbd raid is software raid, with the exception of a few really high end boards.

If you plan to raid5 three slow drives you will create an even slower array. If you want some semblance of speed, get a 4th drive and go raid10.

Lastly raid5 is for uptime should a drive fail. If you want your data safe then you need a backup system instead.
 

csiegle56

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Yea but my real concern is if the drives on the sata3 port will be bottle necked by the other interface or if they will actually be down scaled to sata2 on a hardware level. If not I imagine the two drives will produce more redundancy issues since its obviously not a good idea to use two drives that are similar but with different sata interfaces so I would think using two different interfaces would also not be a good Idea but it has to at least be possible if the manual is stating that raid 5 and 10 are options being that they use more than two drives.

I would be willing to bet that it is hardware emulated raid as opposed to purely hardware/software raid. Not sure though like you said I know boards exist that actually have hardware controllers for raid and this board is high end for the Z77 chipset. I guess this might be able to put that question to an end. If in the Bios/UEFI if the setup screen is a rapid storage utility would that mean it is software raid like i said before it is most likely just a means to set up the raid configuration in the bios so the drive can be recognized before entering the OS and then have the Intel Rapid Storage driver handle everything on a software level. But then what would be the point of having the rapid storage utility in the bios if its all handled on a software level anyways?

Raid 10 might seem like a decent idea if its at least hardware emulated raid but my goal is not to keep my drives at their original speed or increase. I know I am going to take a hit with write speeds and hopefully read speeds will be close to single drive performance or a little better. I simply don't want to compound this reduction by using purely software raid like windows uses because it creates a Virtual Hard drive making things slower yet. I also would really rather not put my system ssd on a third party controller for stability and speed concerns.

I understood that raid 5 is not primarily for redundancy and setting up raid in general comes with its own point of failure beyond mechanical failure or situational events like power surges. I have other disks that just dont match that I can use to create disk images for the OS and then use file history backups for the data drives on the array. I cant be creating 1Tb images because it takes up an enormous amount of time and puts alot of wear and tear on disks and manually backing up files takes to much time and effort not to mention in certain scenarios like music files where I try to organize it I cant simply drag these files and overwrite the files that changed I would have to go through everything individually or just delete the whole backup drive which again would take time and put to much were and tear on the drive.

I am being quite difficult being that I am refusing better overall options for the storage issue specifically but I am just trying to balance the configuration of the whole system and am unwilling to make certain sacrifices in other areas. So working in the confines of this situation what would you guys recommend I do. There is just a kind of a hazy understanding of how this will work so I just need someone to elaborate on how my way of going about this is actually going to work so I can try to rethink this.
 
Well if the whole SATA 2/3 is the issue you are having know this. Standard Hard Disk Drives still can't even use all the bandwith that SATA 2 offers. The real reason SATA 3 came along was for SSD's so don't even worry about the SATA 2/3 issue.

And as popatin said it would be better to go with a RAID 10 honestly if you have the space and ports. I setup a client orginally with 3 1TB's in a RAID 5. Shower than a turtle even though they were nice WD Reds. Then tossed in a 4th, made it a RAID 10 and BAM! getting 250-300 MB Read and write. Great thing about RAID 10 is you are able to have a drive fail in every RAID 1 (In your case it would be a RAID 0 or two RAID 1's and still keep on chugging along. You lose both drives in a RAID 1 then your's screwed.

A RAID 0, 1, Or 10 usually always keeps the same speed or increase them. Any RAID with a RAID 5 or 6 in it will decrease the speed if you're only useing 3-4 drives. You gotta get a good controller with a BBU and have some high end drives to make it fast. These days we don't even do RAID 5 anymore on most of our clients. Hard drives are much bigger and more reliable (At least on the Enterprise side) and so cheap where we just put them in a RAID 1 and always keep up on their backups.

But yea I'd go with a RAID 10 if you have the space. Spend the extra 100-150 bucks depending on the size of the hard drive and get the better performance.
 
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