Okay, I'm about to set up a sata raid0 on one of my computers, with the mobo (albatron KX18D Pro II) having on-board SI sata/raid. Now I've already got a single sata drive currently attached, a raptor that works perfectly, and I want to be able to go back and forth between the raptor and the raid setup (two other WD sata drives), and this leads to my question:

I'll have the single sata drive, plus the pair of raid0 drives. Once I set up the raid0, is it particularly complicated to detach those drives and put back the raptor drive, and then detach the raptor and put back the raid0 drives? In other words, go back and forth between the two hdd systems? My concern is that if I detach the raid0 drives, I'll have to start from scratch again when I try to reattach them. Plus, once I set up the raid0 and then try to use the single sata raptor, I don't want to mess up the raptor in any way. I don't plan on switching back and forth excessively, but I would like to be able to go back to the raptor drive initially until I get the raid0 completely up and running.

I hope this makes sense. And I know there are particulars about any specific raid system, but in general terms, is there a problem detaching and then reattaching a pair of drives configured in a raid setup? Thanks.

marty

RAID-0 striping is dodgy enough and if the array gets broken you would need to reinstate from an image file or possibly by using raid reconstructor software such as can be obtained from www.runtime.org.

Theoretically (but depending on where and how the RAID BIOS setup is maintained) you probably should be able to do this. The only real way of knowing is to try it out of course. Personally I would not mess around with a RAID-0 - and certainly not without an imaged clone if there was significant data, etc on the array. I wouldn't forsee any problems with the straightforward SATA drive.

If experimenting ensure you attach and detach the pair of RAID-0s as a pair and while the system is powered down to minimize the chances of failure.

Thanks for the feedback, Paul. Have you had much experience with a raid0 array? I don't mean that in a challenging way, but I'm really looking for feedback from anyone with good hands-on experience managing a raid0 array, making changes, etc. And yes, I certainly intend to back it up optically once I install the OS along with key programs (e.g., Office), drivers, etc. I do that with every fresh install, basically creating my own set of restore disks.

There will be no crucial data on the raid array. I always keep crucial information, files, etc., on a separate storage drive, which I then backup to optical storage. The raid array will be fun, entertainment, curiosity, whatever you want to call it. Nevertheless, I might want to use the single sata drive in the process of getting the raid array up and running, and am just wanting to know if that's possible without screwing up either the raid array and/or the single sata drive.

marty

My current mobo has two normal IDE channels (for the usual four IDE/ATA devices) and an on-board Promise RAID controller that has two SATA connectors and one PATA connector.

I have two Raptors attached to the two SATAs and one IDE HDD to the PATA. The array configurations/allocations of these three drives is set by depressing a key during boot-up. The PATA is set up as a single drive RAID-0 stripe (the only way to access a single drive on that connector) and I use the two Raptors as a RAID-1 mirror. Only one array can be set as the bootable array - currently the RAID-1.

If I detach one of the Raptor mirrors then the array is broken and must be rebuilt when that drive is replaced. This is of course easy for a mirror and since both drives are OK I can choose which one to use as the basis for the new mirror. The array has on occasion been broken accidentally by loose molex connections and the same rebuilding is then necessary - but only one of the drives will, in that situation, be any good as the basis for the mirror.

If both SATAs are removed simultaneously and replaced simultaneously then there are no prompts to rebuild the array and everything continues to function normally.

I have never used the pair of Raptors in a RAID-0 but can only assume that the array would be broken by the same sort of disruptions, when a drive loses power or data connectivity. The only difference would then be that the whole array would need to be first defined and then restored from backup.

I can remove and re-attach the single drive RAID-0 without problems but since that "array" doesn't span any drives that is perhaps not surprising.

I hope that helps with any insight. One of the probems with both SATA and RAID is that every system seems to be uniquely different with their own quirks and BIOS settings. Since there are no standards as such one needs to be prepared to experiment when using such "cutting edge" technology. Eventually the same standards/set-ups are likely to converge.

Will be most interested to see how you get on and for your experiences to be used to expand the knowledge base in this area.

I used to have two Raptors in a Raid 0 array. Many times I had unplugged the drives (while powered down), and plugged them back in with no worries. One thing I did do was mark one of the drives, so I could plug it back in the same sata channel. I don't know if this is entirely necessary, but I thought better safe than sorry.

I also experimented quite a bit. I would disable the sata raid boot rom in my bios, and then tried using the raptors as two single drives. Then I re-enabled the boot rom and restored the original system image I had crated when using Raid 0. No problem. I even deleted the Raid 0 array, thus destroying all data, set it up again with a different stripe size, reinstated my previous image again. No problem.

I have used these drives in Raid 0, no Raid, and Raid 1 and have noticed absolutely no difference in performance. Yes, Raid 0 benchmarked a little better, but not significantly. In everyday use, gaming, video/photo editing, encoding, the difference was at best negligible.

My feeling is that because Raid 0 offers so little performance advantage for a desktop system, and introduces a greater likelihood of failure, it simply is not worth it. I now use Raid 1 (mirroring), like Paul. Again, in synthetic benchmarks, this setup is slightly slower. In everyday use, I notice absolutely no difference. However, if one drive now fails, I will have no downtime at all, as everything has been mirrored to the other drive.

Using two 80 gig drives in Raid 0 will give 160 Gigs of space. Using that just for the system and not data seems a waste of space.

I know you look at this as more of an experiment and are doing it for interest's sake and fun. So, by all means go for it. If you take care to make backups, read your motherboard manual closely, I doubt you will run into any serious problems either imaging or swapping out and replacing the drives.

Just to show you the meagre returns of Raid 0 ( I know you already know of the risks), have a look at this article: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101

You'll do it anyway, I know ;), so have fun! :)

Thanks. Paul and Malcoroe, I really, genuinely appreciate your thoughtful answers. And to be honest, Malcore, I think you've talked me out of setting up raid0. I remember well the anandtech article and the furor it raised. MaximumPC followed up with a similar test with two raptors and similarly found little if any real-world difference, with the gains confined mostly to benchmark tests.

I'm sitting here well into the evening, getting my son to bed, tired, thinking of work-related stuff that I should be doing, and thinking about whether I want to embark on this (the drives arrived today, wow newegg, I ordered them Friday afternoon and they were here by noon today, with absolutely no special shipping), and to be honest, I'm not sure if the effort is worth it. There's this part of me that says this is probably more folly than it's worth. The drives won't go to waste, hell, I'll use them as backup drives (right now, I have a pata drive backing up one of my sata drives, it works, but I'd rather have a sata drive ready to go). Plus, I'll probably be building another system to donate to my son's school. Never hurts to have a few hdds laying about.

So I'm going to pause and think about this. Your information is gold, very encouraging, and who knows, the chances of me getting adventurous this weekend is probably 50-50. But my gut says wait, so I will.

Thanks again.

marty

I agree with Malcore that having a RAID-1 Mirror is a great way to use the two SATAs. Good luck and have fun whatever you decide.

Geez marty, I lost track of this thread. It wasn't my intention to talk you out of raid0. On rereading my last post, it certainly seems like that was exactly what I was trying to do! I hate to sound like a stick-in-the-mud. :(

Have you mulled it over enough? Any decision? As has been said before, with good backups, there's not much to worry about. You will gain some good first hand experience, and all you have to lose is a bit of time. I had a lot of fun playing about with various configurations with two sata drives. You have the two drives now, if not raid0, then give raid1 a go.

Heheh, not only a stick-in-the-mud, but Janus-faced to boot! :( :)

Thanks malcore. I appreciate the thought. I did not feel like you were trying to talk me out of it. On the contrary, I'm still oppositional enough that if someone tries to talk me out of something, I'll do the opposite!! No it was your simple laying out of the facts that reminded me of the findings about RAID0 really not improving performance to a significant degree. Plus, almost separately, I ran HDTach the other day (had not done so in a while), and it was interesting read the specs. Per HDTach, while throughput increases significantly with RAID0, access time is actually slower than a single drive, in my case, the 74g raptor. So maybe on balance, it's a wash.

My original intention was to purchase a single sata drive as a backup drive, and then thinking about raid0, I got two of them. But then I started getting "real" about whether to do it or now. Who knows, maybe I'll play with it a bit, do some benchmarks, whatever, but in the long run the drives likely will end up as backup hdds to my primary drives. Also, I may install linux on one of them for fun.

That's the nice thing about hdds right now, they are relatively inexpensive if purchased on-line at places like newegg, and rather than setting up partitions, dual-boot, whatever, I find it much simpler to have separate drives. Case in point: I bought a pata drive (wd 80g SE) to back up the hdd (same model) in my wife's dell. Well, dell's bios just confuses things, for some reason I was having major problems copying the drive, and finally said the hell with it. Well, for my kt-600 system, which I usually run with XP on a sata drive, I had copied 98se onto an old pata drive, for my son's use. I have found that some older games just run better under 98se. Anyway, I copied that old 98se drive onto the new wd SE, and now those 98se games just fly on the kt-600.

For me, there's almost no such thing as too many hdds: I fully utilize them one way or another. Take care.

marty

Well, I gave it a shot last night, and utter frustration. To make a long story short, I had no trouble setting up the array, that was incredibly easy. But in the long run, I think one of the drives is bad, as best as I can tell. I'll know more later today when I check them again. Right now, I just don't even want to look at those drives!!

The XP installation kept stalling, freezing basically, and extremely slow. Upon checking the drives subsequently, one of them simply does not seem to work. If that indeed turns out to be the case, I'm done with raid0, as that obviously is one of the risks, i.e., one bad drive screws up everything. What a waste of an evening. Oh well, I had no difficulty putting the raptor and my storage drive back in and getting everything back to normal.

marty

Well, the horror continued. I cannot get either of these drives to work individually. I tried to format each of them via partition magic 8, then through windows XP. I was able to get one of them to format with XP, but then it wouldn't work, actually disappeared in XP at one point. I tried switching power connections, sata cables, everything, and a total bust. I don't think I screwed up anything, I handled these carefully, but I'm cognizant that the odds of two hdds being dead are pretty slim. On the other hand, they are identical and their production date was the exact same day. So who knows, I'll call newegg on Monday and try to rma. God knows I spend my son's college fund many times over at that place, and have RMAed there before without problems. Odd thing is that I have another of these drives and had absolutely no problem with it. That's why I ordered the same models. I've had installs go bad before, but I was able to then reinstall or work with the drive in another capacity. But not with these (perhaps that's why the install went bad). My bios registers each drive, but when I try to actually work with the drives in windows, or through a utility, or during XP installation (two different XP installation disks), it's been a total bust. So I'm suspicious that they are faulty. I have pretty good equipment otherwise, a good psu, mobo, memory.

Oh well, the lost weekend.

marty

Have you tried running any diagnostics on the drives:
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999

Thanks for the link. I had the data lifeguard tools, but not the diagnostic. So I ran it on both drives. Interesting, both drives pass the quick test. However, in order to return these drives to pristine status, I tried to copy zeros. On one drive I got a error status code 0132, and on the other drive it just freezes. (edit: I double checked that error code, and it says I used the wrong diagnostic, so I double checked again with the wd site, and I used the correct file. This has been a royal cluster**** from the word go).

I need to look up the error code to see what it means.

One other interesting finding, I was able to get the exact serial numbers of these drives, and they are very close (93854917 and 93855031), and as I mentioned earlier, manufactured on the same day.

So I'm finished with these drives for now. I have wasted 10 -12 hours working with these. Thanks for all your help. If you have any more ideas, I'm open. But I think at this point I simply try to RMA the drives. Take care.

marty

Update. I contacted newegg and got an rma (refund) for both drives. God bless newegg (though I am a good customer). I was careful physically handling these drives, setting up the raid array was quite simple and straightforward, and I performed operations with which I was familiar. Nevertheless, something went wrong. I suspect one of the drives was bad and using it in the raid configuration and then trying to install XP somehow must have affected the other drive. That's my best guess. But who knows.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. I'm a little hdd gun-shy right now. I will probably order two new drives, but perhaps a different brand (despite my previous success using this drive).

marty