Intel RAID

Hello,
may I ask - does the the Intel's RAID allow user to make more raid partitions than 2?

E.g.: 2 drives, 70gb raid0, 70gb raid0, 70gb raid1, rest non raid?

With software RAID in windows it is possible.

Second question: While on the intel controller - can I manipulate with partitions? Moving, size changing, etc.

Once again - on windows I can manipulate with partitions unless they are in RAID, then easeus partition master said that he can't work with dynamic drives.

Thank you!

 

Strictly speaking, any standard-compliant raid setup will use the ENTIRE DISK for the raid set.

What you're looking for is mirrored partitions. Do-able from inside windows but not a real good idea. Setting things up like you've described is going to bring a lot of resource contention, so much so that any hope you think you have of gaining 'speed' with a raid 0 setup will be lost before you start.

Don't even get me started on why no one should ever ever call a simple striped volume a 'raid 0' set. It's really Raid Zero as in No Redundancy and high risk for 100% unrecoverable data loss.

Keep it simple.

 

okay that's theory, let's get to real world now

How did you come to this assumption? I don't want both drivers mirrored, I want just part of the drives to be mirrored.

I don't see why there should be any "resource contention". How is one big stripped partition different than two stripped partitions on the same drive array?

What bothers you is that RAID0 isnt REDUNDANT array? Do you call netbooks netbooks? If so, stop, it's Psion's product.

 

No redundancy if you are an idiot and don't use an external disk to backup any important data.

 

I have local server here with enough free storage space for any of backups I would like to do - and I will do.

Please, don't do mentoring here about the caveats of STRIPPED volumes. I know them. I know how much performance will I gain or lose.

I just want to know the practical use of it - what can I expect and what should I be prepared for. If I think my system partition is too small (right now, without any raid) I can just shrink the other one then move it forward and expand the partition I want. No big deal. It will take some time but whatever.

 

From your signature I assume you're asking for a notebook.
You can configure the 2 disks in a so called matrix configuration, that means you can configure the 2 disks in 2 Raid volumes. Each volume can be RAID0 or RAID1. But you have to dedicate the whole space of the 2 disks to the so called RAID array.
I have my HP 8530w with 2 x 128 GB SSDs in such a configuration. I had it also in the combination RAID0 for the OS volume(partition) and RAID1 for the second volume(data).
Look at my signature!

 

Okay, I get it - Intel RAID controller is just pure stupid and worthless piece of equipment. Good to know I will have to use software raid (which is the intel controller anyway).

 

seems like you had your mind made up before you opened the thread, good luck......

 

I don't think the Intel RAID controller is worthless. It's a combination of software and hardware. AFAIK each RAID controller has its special driver.
The Intel RAID controller will outperform every Software RAID, I'm pretty sure.
Why don't you use an external RAID cabinet connected via eSATA?

 

wt f are you talking about. I was gaining some info and after I did I made up my mind, I wasn't sure until maximinimaus explained it to me, rather than whining about "omg raid 0 isn't raid QQ" looked like someone had made up his mind what will he write here before he even started reading my actual questions

thanks maximinimaus

Becuase I want system to run from the raid, that's my point of doing that

 

Wow, so much rage in this thread...

Anyway, to answer your question:

(1) Does the the Intel's RAID allow user to make more raid partitions than 2?

No, not from the Intel RAID controllers that I have seen. You need to assign entire disks to the RAID array. Now, you can create multiple PARTITIONS inside of a RAID array. But as far as a RAID controller goes, it needs to use the entire physical disk as part of the RAID array.



(2) Second question: While on the intel controller - can I manipulate with partitions? Moving, size changing, etc.

Yes. You can do whatever you want with PARTITIONS once you have already created a RAID array. From the perspective of the software that is accessing that RAID array (Windows OS, Linux OS, re-partitioning / re-sizing tools, etc), it cannot tell the difference between a single physical disk or a RAID array behind a hardware RAID controller. So whatever you can do with a single physical disk, you can do with a RAID array.

 

Okay thanks, that's what I wanted to hear - I can't make more separate raid volumes to achieve combined efficiency of RAID0's speed, RAID1's redundancy and simple volumes just to store movies.

Windows can do that. I've seen benchmarks and they didn't prove any performance upgrade over "hardware" raid (maybe I didn't understand them right). Is there any argument why would I want to sacrifice ability to do multiple raid volumes (read: not partitions) on given set of drives over "intel matrix"? Is there something I've overseen?

yes, because I don't want to hear about how dumb I am to even think about notRAID0 because I will lose all of my data.

 

There are two major drawbacks of software-based RAID:

(1) You get a performance hit. The RAID'ing happens at the software (OS) level, and not at the device block level (hardware). That is extra processing that needs to happen, and an extra performance hit you get.

(2) Software RAID requires software. If your Windows OS were to somehow get corrupted or bite the bullet, you'll have a tough time getting to your data.

Software RAID is really a "poor man's" RAID solution. There really isn't a good reason to do it, unless you absolutely need RAID and do not have access to hardware RAID.

The other posters in this thread may not have said it nicely, but they are correct. You don't get a real-world performance boost with RAID-0 (striping).

RAID-0 (striping) gives you a theoretical performance bump in sequential read / write patterns. And you will find benchmarks that show that a RAID-0 array outperforms a single drive in sequential read / write patterns. However, 95% of the disk usage patterns for typical users are random read/write patterns, and not sequential.

The only people that really notice any real-world performance benefit from RAID-0 on mechanical HDDs are people like professional photographers and video editors, because they frequently load files with very large data sizes. Regular users and gamers will not really notice a performance benefit.

 

software vs hardware raid? why?

 

I disagree.
Using RAID-0 improved my random 4K writes by about 300 %. As I have the possibility, I'm using this free of charge gift. Also only with RAID-0 one can activate the write back cache of IRST.
As I do backups of my partitions regularly, I don't care about the possibility of a disk hardware failure. I never experienced one. But if one happens, I reconfigure my system to AHCI mode and restore the partitions from the backups.
I have always a working image of the OS partition with AHCI configuration and RAID mode.