I bought 8 western digital RE4 drives and a Acreca 1222 Raid Controller. Processor and Operating system is 64bit. I want to know if it’s possible to create a raid 10 on all 8 drives....It will then create a 4tb of useable storage. After that I want to boot into windows server 2008 and load the driver. I have done all of this so far, however when I create a 200gb partition for the OS it will not install on it. Is it because of the initial 4tb raid configuration? I know I can create two separate raid 10's making drive 1-4 on a 2tb setup and drives 5-8 on a second raid 10 setup. After that i can boot into windows and then split one of the 2tb drives into 200gb and 1.8 tb. Then install the OS on the 200gb. Is that the correct way to do it. I rather have the option to create one lager 4tb raid setup and then boot into the windows install and create a 200gb partitions. I rather have this mainly because the performance would be a lot better with a raid 10 across 8 drives then having 2 separate raid 10 setups.
8 1tb drives Raid 10
- Thread starter Ben91483
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I believe your raid controller will allow you to create the Raid 10 using all 8 drives, then create a 200g volume in the raid controller bios, and another volume using the remainder of the space. When you boot to your Windows disk I think the volumes would look to Windows as if they were actually different disk. You should then be able to install Windows on the 200g volume, and then format the rest of the space once you've got Windows install.
Assuming your RAID controller supports booting off of partitions larger than 2 TB, you should be fine. I looked in the manual and I believe it does.
I would do RAID slightly different than you are thinking. I'd use RAID 0 on four RAID 1 arrays instead of RAID 1 on two RAID 0 arrays.
I'd do RAID 1 with drives 1 and 5, then RAID 1 with drives 2 and 6, RAID 1 with drives 3 and 7, RAID 1 with drives 4 and 8. Then do RAID 0 on all of your arrays. I recommend this way for redundancy reasons.
I do not recommend attempting what the previous poster is suggesting. Most Hardware RAID devices (From what I've seen and I have 3 Areca RAID controllers) won't let you use 200 GB from you drives and then use the rest for a second drive. Create the arrays as one large drive. You should be able to use Windows Server 2008 to partition the drive as GPT (Don't use MBR). You should be able to create a 200 GB partition at the beginning and then a second partition that uses the rest of the drive space.
I would do RAID slightly different than you are thinking. I'd use RAID 0 on four RAID 1 arrays instead of RAID 1 on two RAID 0 arrays.
I'd do RAID 1 with drives 1 and 5, then RAID 1 with drives 2 and 6, RAID 1 with drives 3 and 7, RAID 1 with drives 4 and 8. Then do RAID 0 on all of your arrays. I recommend this way for redundancy reasons.
I do not recommend attempting what the previous poster is suggesting. Most Hardware RAID devices (From what I've seen and I have 3 Areca RAID controllers) won't let you use 200 GB from you drives and then use the rest for a second drive. Create the arrays as one large drive. You should be able to use Windows Server 2008 to partition the drive as GPT (Don't use MBR). You should be able to create a 200 GB partition at the beginning and then a second partition that uses the rest of the drive space.
"Assuming your RAID controller supports booting off of partitions larger than 2 TB, you should be fine. I looked in the manual and I believe it does. "
This isn't really related to the Raid bios, it would be the sysboards bios which would need to be UEFI to allow booting to drives greater then 2tb.
"I would do RAID slightly different than you are thinking. I'd use RAID 0 on four RAID 1 arrays instead of RAID 1 on two RAID 0 arrays. "
From Wiki: RAID 0+1: striped sets in a mirrored set (minimum four disks; even number of disks) provides fault tolerance and improved performance but increases complexity.
The key difference from RAID 1+0 is that RAID 0+1 creates a second striped set to mirror a primary striped set. The array continues to operate with one or more drives failed in the same mirror set, but if drives fail on both sides of the mirror the data on the RAID system is lost.
RAID 1+0: (a.k.a. RAID 10) mirrored sets in a striped set (minimum four disks; even number of disks) provides fault tolerance and improved performance but increases complexity.
The key difference from RAID 0+1 is that RAID 1+0 creates a striped set from a series of mirrored drives. The array can sustain multiple drive losses so long as no mirror loses all its drives.
Take your pick on that one, both have +/-
"I do not recommend attempting what the previous poster is suggesting. Most Hardware RAID devices (From what I've seen and I have 3 Areca RAID controllers) won't let you use 200 GB from you drives and then use the rest for a second drive. Create the arrays as one large drive. You should be able to use Windows Server 2008 to partition the drive as GPT (Don't use MBR). You should be able to create a 200 GB partition at the beginning and then a second partition that uses the rest of the drive space."
Virtual drives are becoming more and more common, however if the controller won't allow it, which I thought it did from reading the manual, it's not really an option. It may be worth getting two smaller drives with a Raid 1 set for the OS, and the 8 x 1tb drives for storage. It's not generally a great practice to run the OS/Storage on the same sets regardless of if you can get it working that way. No need to run Server OS to format a drive as GPT, Win 7 will handle that. If he creates the array as one large drive Windows will only allow using the first 2tb of drive space, and installing to that. Even after you get Windows loaded you will not be able to use the remainder of the space formatted as GPT as you can't have mbr/gpt on the same disk.
This isn't really related to the Raid bios, it would be the sysboards bios which would need to be UEFI to allow booting to drives greater then 2tb.
"I would do RAID slightly different than you are thinking. I'd use RAID 0 on four RAID 1 arrays instead of RAID 1 on two RAID 0 arrays. "
From Wiki: RAID 0+1: striped sets in a mirrored set (minimum four disks; even number of disks) provides fault tolerance and improved performance but increases complexity.
The key difference from RAID 1+0 is that RAID 0+1 creates a second striped set to mirror a primary striped set. The array continues to operate with one or more drives failed in the same mirror set, but if drives fail on both sides of the mirror the data on the RAID system is lost.
RAID 1+0: (a.k.a. RAID 10) mirrored sets in a striped set (minimum four disks; even number of disks) provides fault tolerance and improved performance but increases complexity.
The key difference from RAID 0+1 is that RAID 1+0 creates a striped set from a series of mirrored drives. The array can sustain multiple drive losses so long as no mirror loses all its drives.
Take your pick on that one, both have +/-
"I do not recommend attempting what the previous poster is suggesting. Most Hardware RAID devices (From what I've seen and I have 3 Areca RAID controllers) won't let you use 200 GB from you drives and then use the rest for a second drive. Create the arrays as one large drive. You should be able to use Windows Server 2008 to partition the drive as GPT (Don't use MBR). You should be able to create a 200 GB partition at the beginning and then a second partition that uses the rest of the drive space."
Virtual drives are becoming more and more common, however if the controller won't allow it, which I thought it did from reading the manual, it's not really an option. It may be worth getting two smaller drives with a Raid 1 set for the OS, and the 8 x 1tb drives for storage. It's not generally a great practice to run the OS/Storage on the same sets regardless of if you can get it working that way. No need to run Server OS to format a drive as GPT, Win 7 will handle that. If he creates the array as one large drive Windows will only allow using the first 2tb of drive space, and installing to that. Even after you get Windows loaded you will not be able to use the remainder of the space formatted as GPT as you can't have mbr/gpt on the same disk.
I was able to figure it out. Thanks for the support. I was originally trying to setup the raid in the raid quick setup menu. However, it seems that I had to do this in the manual setup and select the drives and raid. So basically I selected all of the drives, selected raid 10, and create a 200gb partition. After the controller created the 200 gb partition it went back to manually creating a array screen. It didn't have a opition to do everything at once. It's not a big deal. I went back into manually creating a array. It only showed what I had left to create another array. I created 2 more raid 10 partitions and based off the extra space and let it initialize. I then restarted the server and server 2008 and loaded the raid driver. Windows then saw the 3 paritions. One 200gb and 2 1.8 tb drives. I then took the drivers disc out and put the windows disc back in and it installed perfectly.
pinkeye
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- Sep 22, 2010
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Sorry for 'grave digging', but I've spent MONTHS searching for someone who's had even similar to my troubles. This thread seems almost exactly the same!
I had 8 WD Cav Black 1TB drives gathering dust, and picked-up a 2720SGL card cheap. Thought I'd use them all, cheap WIN. Best speeds, 4TB is PLENTY, and total cost is peanuts. I believe the theory is perfectly fine. RAID 10 scales.
I created the array in the Rocketraid BIOS. Windows never saw it properly. By memory, it only saw 2TB partition (200GB?) + maybe 3TB unaccessble (in ANY way) or something messed-up like that. Maybe it's exactly as the OP has described!
Copied stuff on there from an SSD. Speeds were <150MB/s. Which seemed just-normal for Cav Blacks. Eventually restarted the PC... Array was never seen again. That was 10+ months ago. I'm not even looking to use it for booting. I prefer SSD for boot, Cav Blacks for storage & working drive.
RAID and I SERIOUSLY do not get along.
I had 8 WD Cav Black 1TB drives gathering dust, and picked-up a 2720SGL card cheap. Thought I'd use them all, cheap WIN. Best speeds, 4TB is PLENTY, and total cost is peanuts. I believe the theory is perfectly fine. RAID 10 scales.
I created the array in the Rocketraid BIOS. Windows never saw it properly. By memory, it only saw 2TB partition (200GB?) + maybe 3TB unaccessble (in ANY way) or something messed-up like that. Maybe it's exactly as the OP has described!
Copied stuff on there from an SSD. Speeds were <150MB/s. Which seemed just-normal for Cav Blacks. Eventually restarted the PC... Array was never seen again. That was 10+ months ago. I'm not even looking to use it for booting. I prefer SSD for boot, Cav Blacks for storage & working drive.
RAID and I SERIOUSLY do not get along.
Nothing_But_NAS
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- Nov 13, 2012
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- 10,660
Start a new thread, this one is tagged as solved and my be overlooked. Sounds like your problem is the Rocketraid. Highpoint makes POS controllers which are PITA to deal with. You're better off hooking all the drives to your SATA ports (if you have enough) and run software RAID.
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