Raid 0, dual boot - Windows 7 and OS X mavericks

[sorrowbringer]

Hi,
I`m new to forum and also hackintosh, so if this post is wrong place, please move it somewhere else and bear with me

First of all, this is my build:
CPU: INTEL Core i5 3570K 3,4GHz, 6MB
ram: TEAM RAM DDR3 16GB (2x8GB) 1600MHz Xtreem Vulcan (9-9-9-24)
HDD: 2 x WD 1TB HDD Caviar Black (Just to be clear I DON`T want to buy SSD yet)
MB: ASRock Z77 PRO4 / Z77 / LGA1155/ DDR3 2800/ ATX
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX650 Ti BOOST /PCI-E/ 2GB GDDR5
PSU: some 80PLUS bronze ...
ODD: some samsung but since I will boot everything from USB, there shouldn`t be any problem.

I`ve done some reading:

[URL]http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-lion-desktop-guides/96604-guide-asrock-z77-pro3-bios-1-90-patched.html[/URL]
[URL]http://www.tonymacx86.com/desktop-compatibility/105962-custom-build-i3-3220-asrock-z77-pro3-compatibility-hackintosh.html[/URL]
[URL]http://www.tonymacx86.com/328-native-support-nvidia-gtx-650-ti-gtx-660-graphics-cards-10-8-3/comments4.html[/URL]
[URL]http://www.tonymacx86.com/hp-probook/119916-guide-dual-boot-mac-os-x-mavericks-windows-7-hp-probook-6470b.html[/URL]

- my wifi pcie adapter should be comptaible as well

All of those are crystal clear and there is no problem to google more to help me, but here comes my problem - from what I have read it is somehow impossible. Windows RAID is incompatible with OS X`s and vice versa.I know about risks, and yes I`m doing this for speed, don`t worry all of important data are stored in online cloud, and if any of disks fail, I couldn`t care less about movies, TV series etc., other things I care about are stored on my 2 external HDDs and I plug them in, only if I need them for backup.
Is there any way to have both OS in compatible RAID ? Is there any workaround ? I can`t imagine to have set RAID in bios, and force OS X to ignore BIOS settings and use fakeraid - I read some articles about that and non of them was clear, they didn`t even imply, that it is possible. Any help from pros ? LAST resort would be buying Raid card (and if I have no idea which, since those are waters I have never been to)

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Hi,
I`m new to forum and also hackintosh, so if this post is wrong place, please move it somewhere else and bear with me

First of all, this is my build:
CPU: INTEL Core i5 3570K 3,4GHz, 6MB
ram: TEAM RAM DDR3 16GB (2x8GB) 1600MHz Xtreem Vulcan (9-9-9-24)
HDD: 2 x WD 1TB HDD Caviar Black (Just to be clear I DON`T want to buy SSD yet)
MB: ASRock Z77 PRO4 / Z77 / LGA1155/ DDR3 2800/ ATX
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX650 Ti BOOST /PCI-E/ 2GB GDDR5
PSU: some 80 bronze ...
ODD: some samsung but since I will boot everything from USB, there shouldn`t be any problem.

I`ve done some reading:

[URL]http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-lion-desktop-guides/96604-guide-asrock-z77-pro3-bios-1-90-patched.html[/URL]
[URL]http://www.tonymacx86.com/desktop-compatibility/105962-custom-build-i3-3220-asrock-z77-pro3-compatibility-hackintosh.html[/URL]
[URL]http://www.tonymacx86.com/328-native-support-nvidia-gtx-650-ti-gtx-660-graphics-cards-10-8-3/comments4.html[/URL]
[URL]http://www.tonymacx86.com/hp-probook/119916-guide-dual-boot-mac-os-x-mavericks-windows-7-hp-probook-6470b.html[/URL]

- my wifi pcie adapter should be comptaible as well

All of those are crystal clear and there is no problem to google more to help me, but here comes my problem - from what I have read it is somehow impossible. Windows RAID is incompatible with OS X`s and vice versa.I know about risks, and yes I`m doing this for speed, don`t worry all of important data are stored in online cloud, and if any of disks fail, I couldn`t care less about movies, TV series etc., other things I care about are stored on my 2 external HDDs and I plug them in, only if I need them for backup.
Is there any way to have both OS in compatible RAID ? Is there any workaround ? I can`t imagine to have set RAID in bios, and force OS X to ignore BIOS settings and use fakeraid - I read some articles about that and non of them was clear, they didn`t even imply, that it is possible. Any help from pros ? LAST resort would be buying Raid card (and if I have no idea which, since those are waters I have never been to)

You are entering strange territory with your requested approach for one simple reason; both OSX and Windows can do soft-raid but they are not compatible with each other.

When you set one system up using soft-raid, the other will still see 2 separate disks. It will get very messy indeed.

If you absolutely must use raid, then a true hardware raid card is the way to go, and even then it is not guaranteed. It must be capable of presenting a single volume to both windows and OSX, in AHCI mode. It also must be driver free (yes they do exist) or have full driver support for your chosen windows version and your OSX version. It must also support booting both systems.

A card that does all that would likely cost as much if not more than a couple of decent SSDs.

Do you have something against buying a couple of fast SSDs ? They really would be your best bet; even a single SSD would easily out-perform your two HDDs in raid0 configuration.

 

[sorrowbringer]

You are entering strange territory with your requested approach for one simple reason; both OSX and Windows can do soft-raid but they are not compatible with each other.

When you set one system up using soft-raid, the other will still see 2 separate disks. It will get very messy indeed.

If you absolutely must use raid, then a true hardware raid card is the way to go, and even then it is not guaranteed. It must be capable of presenting a single volume to both windows and OSX, in AHCI mode. It also must be driver free (yes they do exist) or have full driver support for your chosen windows version and your OSX version. It must also support booting both systems.

A card that does all that would likely cost as much if not more than a couple of decent SSDs.

Do you have something against buying a couple of fast SSDs ? They really would be your best bet; even a single SSD would easily out-perform your two HDDs in raid0 configuration.

I wanted to avoid buying anything, but you made it clear that it would be overcomplicated and it is much simpler to buy SSD than Raid card. So I would dualboot from SSD and those two (separate non raid) HDDs use for data storage, is that correct ?

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

I wanted to avoid buying anything, but you made it clear that it would be overcomplicated and it is much simpler to buy SSD than Raid card. So I would dualboot from SSD and those two (separate non raid) HDDs use for data storage, is that correct ?

If you need to have mass storage attached then yes, that would be a better solution.

You can dual boot from a single SSD or HDD quite happily, just not in raid mode.

What is the performance of your caviar black disks; 130 - 150 mb/sec or somewhere near ?

 

[sorrowbringer]

If you need to have mass storage attached then yes, that would be a better solution.

You can dual boot from a single SSD or HDD quite happily, just not in raid mode.

What is the performance of your caviar black disks; 130 - 150 mb/sec or somewhere near ?

According to online test/review (sigle disk, not in stripping) it should be

average throughput of 124.6MB/s, produced by a write speed of 123.3MB/s and a read speed of 125.9MB/s.

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

According to online test/review (sigle disk, not in stripping) it should be

An inexpensive but decent SSD will give you nearer to 500 for both.

My samsung 840 EVO gives me 498 write and 511 read.

Evidenced here.

 

[sorrowbringer]

OFF TOPIC
Apparently I cant send PM yet so here we go:


I didn`t want to spam forum anymore with this exact questions. If I buy 250 GB SSD how to manage partitions ? 1:1 for Windows and OS X ? I suppose i will install more software/games on windows - but they will be installed on another hard drive (one of HDDs), apart from that, I keep software like Adobe Acrobat Pro, Photoshop etc. on the same partition as OS - I have no idea how much OS Xs software will need - would you help me with that please?

They say around 30 GB out of the box, (SIF included) but experience are experience ...

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

OFF TOPIC
Apparently I cant send PM yet so here we go:


I didn`t want to spam forum anymore with this exact questions. If I buy 250 GB SSD how to manage partitions ? 1:1 for Windows and OS X ? I suppose i will install more software/games on windows - but they will be installed on another hard drive (one of HDDs), apart from that, I keep software like Adobe Acrobat Pro, Photoshop etc. on the same partition as OS - I have no idea how much OS Xs software will need - would you help me with that please?

They say around 30 GB out of the box, (SIF included) but experience are experience ...

Cant really help with that since I dont know exactly what you plan to install and it wouldn't be the same as my build anyway. It is something you will need to work out for yourself.

Maybe install OSX and Windows on each of the separate HDD's you have and see what they add up to....

Btw, you are quite welcome to post messages asking for assistance in the correct forums, that is what they exist for, so we can help each other. Please dont post PMs asking for individual help though; make them public so everyone can benefit from the responses and will help future newcomers.