Trying To Setup Software RAID 0

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fxckitsdillan

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Nov 20, 2012
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Hey guys,

Trying to setup a RAID 0 array with 2 1tb hard drives, but I've got a concern.

I have Windows 7 installed on my main drive C: (120GB) and a second storage drive E: (1tb) with quite a few folders, such as folders out of APPDATA symlinked on to E: as C: lacks the space to deal with it.
I plan to add a second 1tb drive which is the same as the E: that is currently in there (They are both 1tb 7200rpm Barracudas)
To setup RAID 0, I was planning on booting to a USB bootable Windows 7, backup and format E:, setup RAID 0 between E: and the new drive (Assigning them as a now larger E:), then restoring the previous backup of E: onto the RAID 0 array.

My problem is, I don't know if C: Windows will be able to understand/see what USB Windows has done to the hard drives and don't know whether it will work to do it like this.

Will I need to also get a RAID card to make this work, or, will software RAID work?

TLDR: Will Windows 7 on C: pickup a RAID 0 array setup by Windows 7 on USB?
 
Solution
USAFRet
Most of the OS on the SSD and part of it (AppData, etc) on the HDD (RAID 0 or not) will impact the performance of the SSD.

Normally, the AppData lives on the same drive as the rest of the OS. With an SSD, it is all fast.
Living on the HDD, now the SSD has to wait for that slow thing.

Toss in that living on a RAID 0, and we increase the fail potential, with only a minimal increase in performance.

If the RAID 0 was 'just storage', then there would be fewer issues. Not zero, but fewer.
But any RAID 0 + HDD is a lot slower than a single SSD.

You have a lot of complexity for little real performance gain.

My recommendation - buy 1 or 2 new SSD's
250-500GB for the OS and applications. Ditch the symlink thing.
Another SSD for your music...
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amtseung

amtseung

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Jan 28, 2014
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If you're attempting to raid two equivalent storage drives together (non boot partition), then I don't see why windows would have any trouble seeing your raid array. If you're still seeing two separate drives after you've supposedly striped them together instead of a single volume, then you'd have a problem. I'm currently screwing around with two ancient 5200rpm 0.5gb hdd's out of some old dvr's striped together, and my machine had no problems recognizing it upon reboot.

I hope you have everything backed up that needs to be backed up. When a drive fails or corrupts in raid0, the whole volume is gone.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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Personally, I think this is a terrible idea, on multiple counts.

Part of your OS (AppData, etc), symlinked into a HDD RAID 0?

1. You're slowing down the SSD by having it talk directly to the HDD. RAID 0 would speed this up a bit, at the expense of reliability.
2. Software RAID 0? A fail waiting to happen
3. 120GB? Too small, as you have seen.

Just get a bigger SSD and put the whole OS on it.
Faster and more reliable on multiple counts.
 
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fxckitsdillan

Honorable
Nov 20, 2012
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10,510


Thanks for the quick reply and good input :)

I did read something about the SSD being slowed down when paired with a RAID array for storage, is this due to something changing in the setup of the SSD or is it only a concern while the files are symlinked? Someone said something about the mode being changed to IDE for the SSD which would slow it down, but they didn't really clarify anything about why, or how, and in what situations the speed of an SSD would drop.

The main reason I was potentially going to implement a RAID array would be for music production, as there's always a very large amount of files reading and writing at any given point.

At this point I'm leaning towards just a multiple hard drive setup, separating the audio plugins and samples I need to run on one drive, and having all the recording/writing to disk side on another hard drive. Would this be better in your opinion?

PS - I know I really need to increase the size of the C: 120GB for system just doesn't cut it.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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Most of the OS on the SSD and part of it (AppData, etc) on the HDD (RAID 0 or not) will impact the performance of the SSD.

Normally, the AppData lives on the same drive as the rest of the OS. With an SSD, it is all fast.
Living on the HDD, now the SSD has to wait for that slow thing.

Toss in that living on a RAID 0, and we increase the fail potential, with only a minimal increase in performance.

If the RAID 0 was 'just storage', then there would be fewer issues. Not zero, but fewer.
But any RAID 0 + HDD is a lot slower than a single SSD.

You have a lot of complexity for little real performance gain.

My recommendation - buy 1 or 2 new SSD's
250-500GB for the OS and applications. Ditch the symlink thing.
Another SSD for your music files while they are in work.
Possibly use the 120GB for a scratch disk.

When a file is done, move it off to the HDD for long term storage for.

No RAID, no symlink, all fast...:)
 
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Solution
USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
171,648
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At this point I'm leaning towards just a multiple hard drive setup, separating the audio plugins and samples I need to run on one drive, and having all the recording/writing to disk side on another hard drive. Would this be better in your opinion?
Click to expand...
This is quite similar to what I do, except with photo/3D/video, instead of music.

500GB SSD - OS and applications. Incl plugins.
250GB SSD - photo work
250GB SSD - 3D and video
960GB SSD - a bunch of random stuff
3TB HDD - backups, mostly
 
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