RAID guidance

[shremi]

Hi guys.

I was thinking , i already have 2 drives.

So my next improvement for my hack would be configuring RAID.

Just that i don't know anything about how to set it up, i dot want to screw my drives and partitions, i would hate to reinstall everything again.

How can these be done on both OSX and WIN 7.

If some one can point me in the right direction i would appreciate it a lot.

Thanks

Shremi

 

[disconap]

Hm. Not sure on the Windows 7 end of things, but since (without a dedicated RAID card, which might work, I don't know) OSX doesn't recognize onboard RAID controllers as far as I know, you're pretty much stuck with OSX Software RAID. And being someone who doesn't use bootcamp, I have no idea if you can make that work with Windows. Someone else here may be able to answer that better.

Here's a guide to setting up a software RAID in OSX on a hackintosh:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... 60467&st=0

I've been able to make this work, but with a number of issues (see my post in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1628) that I have yet to be able to resolve. If you get it working or if you find other hints, definitely let us know, and good luck!

(Also, you may want to look around on here a bit before starting a new thread, there are several threads already on this topic and some of them have some very helpful hints)

 

[Asylum Design]

Actually, I'm using the same board... P55A-UD3, and I'm booting off of the on-board Marvell Raid... get over 200MB/S in Xbench... it's a little tricky but you can def. do it... Mine is a 2 GB Partition (I'm not even using matched drives... lol and old POS WD1 GB and a 1.5TB ST11 Seagate

 

[disconap]

Hey AD--can you post how you got that to work? This would solve pretty much all my problems...

 

[Asylum Design]

hey... sorry... just saw this...

sure...

Go into the UD3 Bios, enable the GSATA Ports (bottom of screen).
Attach the two hdds to the two WHITE ports on the MB.

In the bios, go into the BIOS RAID SETUP... and create your stripe...

Boot off iBoot CD...
Replace with Snow Leopard DVD... Boot to Install...
In Disk Utility... format the drive as one big ass raid drive... install... Voila!

A note... I have NOT gotten anything larger than 1TB to boot with Chamel. Bootloader... so when I did my RAID 0 setup, I had to keep the stripe to under 1TB... did it mostly for testing purposes... if anyone can help get me booted on ANY drive larger than 1TB I'd GREATLY appreciate it... I feel stooopid there lol

It really should be that easy though!

Let me know if that helps... if not, I can post some walk through screenies?

 

[disconap]

Hmm, ok, I got it all running and working, but...

I ran Xbench just after cloning my hdd to the RAID to record the single SSD's score. I am now up and running on the RAID0, no problem, but the drive scores are actually slightly LOWER than the single SSD's scores! Not significantly lower, and it's nice to have space again (I was close to 80% full on a single drive), but I was really expecting a performance boost as well. Did you run any tests before/after?

I'll run with it for a little while and report back when I know more, but I suspect it is one of three things:

1) Throttling at the MOBO/BIOS end (but doubtful, since the throughput was at 2.5 which, running two SSDs in a RAID zero, means a total possible throughput of 5).

2) Swapping the block size from 64k to 32k was a mistake (could have been, but the drive block size was 32k, and I read that for an OS disc you want smaller blocks, as it's mostly quick reads of small files)

3) OR the RAID setup process wrote to every NAND point, and Garbage Collection will have to work its magic for a little while. I'm hoping it's this last one, which is a possibility, so I'll run XBench at the end of the week and see what's what...

 

[rabbit74]

I have mine setup as follows and it works very well.

SSD boot drive-(OSX)

2 x one terabyte seagate 7200s for RAiD

1 x one Terabyte for backup.

4 Gig RAM-Disc for scratch.

This config is not supported for dual boot with windows though.

Programs and OS on SSD, working files on the RAiD and run CCC once a day to backup important files on the RAiD to the single terabyte.

By keeping working files on the RAID I get great performance, then the backup goes to a standard drive for added security. If one of my raid disks dies or my whole OS blows up I have a hard copy on the single terabyte, which can be easily removed and put in another machine if data recovery is required.

I use RAMDisc as autostart item and it loads a 4 gig ram disk to the desktop which I use as program scratch.

This system allows for maximum performance as well as great security.

I have tried creating a bios raid as boot disk but OSX still reads the 2 drives as non raid. It is pretty tough to create a cross platform raid across OSX and windows. It might be possible with an external raid setup but then you get slowed down by your USB bus.

I hope that helps.

rabbit.

 

[disconap]

Hmm, ok, I got it all running and working, but...

I ran Xbench just after cloning my hdd to the RAID to record the single SSD's score. I am now up and running on the RAID0, no problem, but the drive scores are actually slightly LOWER than the single SSD's scores! Not significantly lower, and it's nice to have space again (I was close to 80% full on a single drive), but I was really expecting a performance boost as well. Did you run any tests before/after?

I'll run with it for a little while and report back when I know more, but I suspect it is one of three things:

1) Throttling at the MOBO/BIOS end (but doubtful, since the throughput was at 2.5 which, running two SSDs in a RAID zero, means a total possible throughput of 5).

2) Swapping the block size from 64k to 32k was a mistake (could have been, but the drive block size was 32k, and I read that for an OS disc you want smaller blocks, as it's mostly quick reads of small files)

3) OR the RAID setup process wrote to every NAND point, and Garbage Collection will have to work its magic for a little while. I'm hoping it's this last one, which is a possibility, so I'll run XBench at the end of the week and see what's what...

To update--I left the compy running all night on the BIOS screen, which according to the OCZ forums should have steadily run GC, if not entirely then significantly to notice a performance difference. Still getting reads in the 140-170mb/s range, which is roughly 20-30% slower than a single drive. Did some searching and found that this seems to be a problem with the Marvell ports, though it is apparently known by the customers and not by GB or Marvell. I wrote to GB and explained my problem, maybe it's an easy fix or a firmware update or something...

 

[Asylum Design]

Good Luck! Keep us posted!

Another options depending on your motherboard is to get SATA to ESATA cables, and run the raid on your hardware ESATA RAID channels (I just noticed I could do this on my UD4P board)... and the raid speed doubled!

 

[tinkerC]

Does anybody know how to make a RAID in Windows?

Tom