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| Thread ID: 83081 | 2007-09-19 00:21:00 | RAID Level 1 questions | Agent_24 (57) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 592487 | 2007-09-19 00:21:00 | Want to upgrade to a bigger storage drive sometime (don't we all) maybe 500GB or more Got me thinking how much I'd be pissed off if the drive was full and then died So a RAID1 array of 2 drives seems a good idea to prevent this - but I have some questions. IF one drive DOES crap out, or start dying, etc... what then? Do you just replace the faulty drive with another and tell something (BIOS? Windows?) to copy data from good drive to the new? what happens if you can't get an exact replacement drive, is it still possible to access all the data? What about upgrading to bigger drives? |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 592488 | 2007-09-19 00:49:00 | Hi, as the data is duplicated, a replacement drive should be accepted by the raid controller and the data copy over to the new drive. If you cant find a replacement, the data is still accessible as a copy remains on the good drive. To upgrade, both drive need to be upgraded, however as one at a time, and after both done, you will be able to create another partition, but wont be able to increase the original partition unless it is a dynamic volume. |
SolMiester (139) | ||
| 592489 | 2007-09-19 00:59:00 | If you can justify the cost of two drives can you justify 3? RAID 5 is better than RAID 1 and would only require 1 more drive. It has all the benefits of RAID 1 plus you gain a performance increase. 2 drive behave like they are in RAID 0 and the third acts as parity. If one of the drives in RAID 0 dies there is sufficient data on the third disk to rebuild the array with a new drive. |
Pete O'Neil (6584) | ||
| 592490 | 2007-09-19 00:59:00 | So upgrading would be best to do both at once (have all 4 drives hooked up) and just copy from old pair to new pair? If you can justify the cost of two drives can you justify 3? RAID 5 is better than RAID 1 and would only require 1 more drive. It has all the benefits of RAID 1 plus you gain a performance increase. 2 drive behave like they are in RAID 0 and the third acts as parity. If one of the drives in RAID 0 dies there is sufficient data on the third disk to rebuild the array with a new drive. What if the 3rd drive dies? |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 592491 | 2007-09-19 19:12:00 | Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) has a large amount of information on RAID. RAID 5 will be fine if ANYONE of the 3 drives die, it can be rebuilt from any two of the drives (assuming there is three in the RAID) |
The_End_Of_Reality (334) | ||
| 592492 | 2007-09-19 21:45:00 | Do you just replace the faulty drive with another and tell something (BIOS? Windows?) to copy data from good drive to the new? Your RAID card or motherboard driver disk should contain utilities to set up/recreate the array should it break. what happens if you can't get an exact replacement drive, is it still possible to access all the data? Ideally you shouldn't have "exactly" the same drive to start with. Same make & model is ok, but not same batch. If one dies, chances are the other will shortly follow. As for replacements in general, you should get one as similar as possible to the original drive - same interface (SATA/PATA), same speed and same or greater amount of space. What about upgrading to bigger drives? What I did when going from 250GB to 500GB drives was: Break the mirror (RAID1) and remove the old drives from the controller. Install new drives & create a new array on them. Install one of the old disks on another disk controller, copy data from one of the old drives to the new array. Done |
autechre (266) | ||
| 592493 | 2007-09-19 23:01:00 | Ideally you shouldn't have "exactly" the same drive to start with. Same make & model is ok, but not same batch. If one dies, chances are the other will shortly follow. As for replacements in general, you should get one as similar as possible to the original drive - same interface (SATA/PATA), same speed and same or greater amount of space. Yeah I read that in the wikipedia article that a different batch might be a good idea... But what I mean is, if I had for example a 120GB Seagate and a 120GB Samsung, it would be possible to run them in RAID1 even they are different brands, or is that too different? I mean I would expect you'd want exactly the same brand/model (though not batch), I don't know what the tolerances are for differences here. eg would a drive with 8MB cache and one with 16MB screw up when running together? |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 592494 | 2007-09-19 23:04:00 | Yeah I read that in the wikipedia article that a different batch might be a good idea... But what I mean is, if I had for example a 120GB Seagate and a 120GB Samsung, it would be possible to run them in RAID1 even they are different brands, or is that too different? I mean I would expect you'd want exactly the same brand/model (though not batch), I don't know what the tolerances are for differences here. eg would a drive with 8MB cache and one with 16MB screw up when running together? It should work with different brands, but using mismatched drives normally hurts performance (not that you get much performance increase with RAID 1). The best idea to is to buy matching drives, try to get the same RPM, and cache sizes, wouldn't worry too much about batch. |
Pete O'Neil (6584) | ||
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