RAID 10

anerky99 · Rated XXX Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 219 Location: UK

Currently got 2 500gb drives running just as seperate drives but im thinking of getting a 1tb hard drive for some extra backup space. Would I be able to set up raid 10, striping the 2 500gb drives ans using the 1tb drive as the backup drive? Got the ability to set it up at hardware level on the gigabyte board i have but not sure if you can do it with 3 drives.
Anyone help please?

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 09:05:07 Post Subject:

Hi!

You could do RAID 1 or RAID 0, but not RAID 10 (sometimes also listed as RAID 0+1) with your configuration. RAID 1 would have the two 500GB drives mirrored, so if one failed, the system could keep going. RAID 0 may be what you are interested in, and would increase read/write performance by accessing them with alternating bits of data (striping), but if one drive fails you will most likely lose everything.

RAID 10 requires 4 drives minimum, and is effectively a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1, with a pair of drives mirroring and a pair of drives striping.

Also - while it may be possible to go from your stand alone configuration to a RAID array with minimal effort, you may wind up having to start with a fresh install (probably wound up this way 9 times out of 10 myself).

anerky99 · Rated XXX Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 219 Location: UK

Yeh ive have raid 0 set up before but removed it when i reinstalled. Wasnt sure if i could do raid 10 because the tb drive could cover both the 500gb drives. What if i partitioned the tb drive to 2 500gb drives?

BeerCheeze · Posted: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 13:23:38 Post Subject:

RAID 10 is a physical requirement of 4 Drives. As Jason stated, RAID 10 is RAID 0 (Striping) and RAID 1 (Mirroring) .

So you have 2 drives that are Stripped - If you have 2 500 GB drives Stripped the OS would see 1 1TB drive. And you have 2 Drives That are Mirroring the Stripped Drives. So, you have 4 500GB drives for a physical space of 2TB, however because of the Mirroring you loose 1/2 of that space and end up with 1TB of useable space.

*NOTE* EDITED RAID Types. Should have proof read what I wrote... Laughing

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 13:40:28 Post Subject:

Maybe just have the 1TB drive as a backup that is updated on a weekly or nightly basis. Could use a variety of 3rd party apps, or even the backup built in to Windows. I actually use it now in Windows 7, so whole images are made on to the network on a weekly basis.

anerky99 · Rated XXX Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 219 Location: UK

Excellent idea. Not sure why that didnt come to me in the first place considering i already use the microsoft backup and synctoy(excellent application if you havent used it) with an external tb drive. Suppose i could jsut do raid0 again and full disc image backups to the internal tb drive i suppose. Just doesnt seem as clean as raid10 did but hey.
RAID0 will atleast speed boots up and such a little until ssd's become slightly more affordable Smile

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Thanks for the help guys, have to put some new pictures up on here when I upgrade my pc again with a couple of 460 talon attacts and new cpu cooler Razz

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BeerCheeze · Posted: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:57:27 Post Subject:

You could also try a combo of hardware & software RAID.

You Hardware RAID 0 your 2 500GB drives to 1TB, you then use software (OS) RAID 1 to Mirror that to your 1TB drive, as the 1TB RAID 0 drive will look like just 1 big drive.

Not sure on the performance of doing that though.

anerky99 · Rated XXX Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 219 Location: UK

Hmm not sure with combining hardware and software RAIDs, was complicated enough last time I had RAID0 jsut on hardware haha, plus if I used something like the windows backup for disc images and synctoy for anything else it lets me set up when I want stuff actually looked at and hopefully would put any performance hits to a select time altohugh I barely notice either of them running now.

anerky99 · Rated XXX Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 219 Location: UK

Do any of you know any decent hard drive cloning programs that are free? its jsut if im going to re do my pc to a RAID setup id rather not have to reinstall everything and if i could cloine the drives i could clone both my drives to the 1tb drive and then clone it all back when i have setup the raid.