Can you go from RAID 0 to RAID 5 or RAID 10?

luzhun · Apr 22, 2017

Hello. I am already using 2 SSD's in Raid 0, but am planning on buying 2 more of the same exact ones so that I can get the backup capability in case one of the drives fail. I already have Win 7 installed on the Raid 0 setup. When I do install the two other drives, would I need to reinstall the operating system again? or can I bypass that by going through BIOS?

I am just wondering how that will work. Thanks for the help.

USAFRet · Apr 22, 2017

1. RAID, of any type, is not a backup.

2. SSD + RAID 0? Have you personally seen any real performance benefit?
Read this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

3. I'd expect that you can't just slap in a couple more drives and turn it into a RAID 5.
At the very least, a full reinstall.

But I wouldn't do that, because #1 & 2.

Solandri · Apr 22, 2017

luzhun :

Outside from a couple very specialized use cases, RAID 0 on SSDs is pointless. SSDs are so fast that if you RAID 0 them, your performance with small file read/writes (which are the operations which bottleneck HDDs and SSDs) will probably decrease due to adding the overhead of RAID.

Read through the real-world test results with two SSDs in RAID 0. While the benchmarks are fantastic, real-world results yield little improvement, or a decrease in performance.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485-10.html

The specialized use cases are real-time video editing, and if you frequently have to copy large files from one SSD to another.

, but am planning on buying 2 more of the same exact ones so that I can get the backup capability in case one of the drives fail.

RAID is not a backup. RAID is for redundancy - if a drive fails, your data is still accessible and you can keep working. Whereas without RAID, you're stuck waiting until you can get a replacement drive and restore from a backup.

Even if you have RAID, you still need a backup to recover from things like accidental file deletion or overwrite, ransomware encrypting your files, or loss of your computer due to fire, theft, or flood.

I already have Win 7 installed on the Raid 0 setup. When I do install the two other drives, would I need to reinstall the operating system again? or can I bypass that by going through BIOS?

If you've got the OS installed on the RAID 0, yes you'll need to reinstall again. But as I stated above, there is very little point to having RAID 0 on SSDs. And putting the OS on RAID 0 (or even RAID 5) is just inviting a lot of headaches in the event of a hardware failure.

You are much better off using one SSD as a boot drive, the second SSD as your frequently-accessed data drive, a large HDD as your archive drive (can be a SSD if you're made of money), and an external HDD for backups which you leave in your desk at work in between backups (in case your house burns down).

Edit: And no, there's no way to convert RAID 0 to RAID 5. RAID 0 is just your data spread across 2 drives. RAID 5 is your data split up with a piece stored on each drive, with one drive holding parity data.

luzhun · Apr 27, 2017

Hey everyone. Thank you for your explanations and for the links. Well.. I just so happen to play Skyrim ALOT and I was getting so tired of waiting through loading screens on the PC version that I wanted to do everything that I could to possibly speed that particular delay up. The results have been fantastic. It has almost been loading as fast as a door opens/closes. So it makes the game even more immersive without all of that waiting. So yes, there has been a benefit. Although I am not sure if it would be as fast with just one of those SSD's by itself. I never got to try Skyrim on one of those SSD's to compare to the speed that the RAID offers.

I do have Acronis True Image 2016 and have created two System images, one going to a secondary 2TB drive and another going to an external drive but I guess I would just like to have the capability of the computer continuing to work if one of the SSD's just so happens to have a hardware failure.

rkzhao · Apr 28, 2017

So, you probably know this, but simple overview:

RAID 0: trades data reliability for raw performance. Data is spread (striped) through all drives so any drive damaged/removed will result in loss/corruption of data on the entire system.
RAID 1: trades capacity for redundancy. Same data on both drives. Read performance may be improved.
RAID 5: Data is striped but include a parity block. Parity allows for data recovery in the case on a single drive failure. Performance is improved but not as much as RAID 0. Redundancy is provided by the parity bit but not to the point of a full mirror copy like RAID 1.
RAID 10: combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0, mirrored copies of stripped data. Allows for the performance of RAID 0 with data redundancy.

Going from one RAID to another will require re installations because the data is stored differently. The only exception might be RAID 0 to RAID 10 since I can see it just mirroring your RAID 0 data to a second set of drives. I don't know personally and have no clue if there's a RAID controller that actually lets you do that, but it seems plausible in theory.

I imagine what you meant by backup is more just redundancy. A lot of people might use the term interchangeably but redundancy is not the same as backup as explained by the previous posts already. Writing the wrong data (viruses, corruption, etc) or deleting the wrong data are just examples of some common things that are not protected by redundancy.

Now as for whether it's worth it. Sure, if money was no issue and you want the absolute fastest possible configuration. For the vast majority of people, the benefits are not worth the costs. I and many others would argue that the SSD isn't anywhere close to being the bottleneck for your load times so there's certainly no need to RAID it. But hey, I'm also someone that doesn't think even going NVMe over SATA is worth the cost for gaming purposes.

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Can you go from RAID 0 to RAID 5 or RAID 10?

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