Wanting To RAID

Boy am I ashamed of myself! I have always owned laptops and recently just purchased a new Lenovo desktop for my office. It has a 1TB HDD with room for another. I would like to setup RAID, but know nothing about it.

My understanding is that when you write to the HDD, it does it exactly on both drives? They must be the same exact HDD?

Can anyone please lead me to a good tutorial for this? I would sure appreciate it!

 

Toyo,

In regards to your questions. Since you have just two drive bays, all you can do is RAID 0 (striping) and RAID 1 (mirroring). Striping is a bit dangerous, because if you lose one drive, the entire RAID volume is wiped out. In essence, in your case, you will almost double the risk of a catastrophic disk failure. With that said, striping is faster than a single disk as the data written/read is split among two drives thus reducing any bottleneck caused the the drive itself.

Mirroring is safer since data is written on both drives - losing one drive still means the data is on the other drive. Writing is longer as both drives have to write the same data, but reading is improved because whichever drive reads the data first is used.

In regards to the same exact HDD, in software based RAID this is not a problem, but in the BIOS (fake) based RAID, I would strongly recommend the exact same make/model HDD.

Finally, you need to research / understand the different RAID levels. Look at some general items:

Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)
RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (but you only need to read about RAID 0 and 1for most laptops. Also RAID 5 and 10 (1+0) on higher end laptops.)
How to Set Up a RAID Array - PCTechGuide.Com
PCGuide - Ref - Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)

Next, determine would you want to RAID? Is it for performance? Is it for safety? What are your reasons?

Also, know your laptop. Is this going to be a BIOS (fake) based RAID or software based RAID?

After that, consult your laptop user's manual. It should have instructions on what you need to do do set up the BIOS RAID. If you are using software based RAID, search around for the operating system support for that as well.

Good luck.

 

Toyo, first make sure that you have the necessary cables and connectors (SATA and Power) to connect the second HDD. Take your bottom cover off the system (I hope that that is all you have to do!) and see if you can simply plug in another HDD. The reason I am starting here is that unless you ordered it with these cables/connectors installed (or more easily two HDD's in each bay...) then there is a good chance that the manufacturer will save a few pennies and give you the two bay notebook without the wiring or connectors to actually use both of them.

If you are satisfied that you can simply drop another HDD inside:

The RAID mode that you are asking about is RAID1. This mirrors data to two (or more) drives and if one fails, will allow you to keep working in a 'degraded' RAID1 state until you replace the faulty drive. Then, it will rebuild the good/existing data onto the new/bare HDD and your system will be mirrored once more.

Although the restriction is not enforced at the hardware level anymore (well, for most RAID controllers; hardware or software type RAID), I still highly recommend you buy two identical HDD's to do this (if you must!). Not only will you get better performance, you will also avoid possible random errors and inconsistencies (performance-wise and reliability-wise) with two identical drives.

To do this: you simply have to select RAID1 as your SATA mode in your BIOS, re-install the O/S 'clean' (this is highly, highly recommended...) and install the latest Intel RST drivers (I'm assuming you're running an Intel chipset). You will also need to disable the power management on your system (from allowing your system to go to sleep) and 'Initialize' your RAID1 volume (this could take many hours - easily overnight...).

I really have to ask you though: what do you think you are gaining with this 'solution'?

You will simply make your notebook more power hungry (2x drives), possibly slower (more than probably, actually...) and being a notebook - if you banged it hard enough to make a single HDD fail, you will probably make both of them fail (false sense of security...).

So, why do you really want to do this? And, just as importantly... do you have the wiring and connectors to actually make this happen?

Hope some of this helped?

Good luck.

 

Thanks guys for your advice and tips. First off, this is a desktop, not a laptop.
Tiller, I have double checked the cables and good to go there. I will read the info you suggested jclausis. I am sure I will be back with many questions.

 

Desktop questions need to go to desktopreview.com.

 

Well RAID 1 with two drives isn't going to make anything slower, and reads can possibly be faster.

 

It can be slower: it will most likely be software RAID. With a dedicated RAID card that was especially tuned for possibly faster reads, I would agree with you.

 

I haven't done the research to prove it, but w/ the fake BIOS RAID on the Intel controllers, I think this is the case as well -> writes are just a bit slower.

 

It's not software RAID. It is half and half. It doesn't have a dedicated processor for it, but it is otherwise the same as a dedicated card.