Question about RAID controllers on motherboard?

[htwingnut]

I have an older Gigabyte motherboard GA-G33M-DS2R that I am going to use with my WHS 2011 build. I already have a WHS v1 system with 1x1TB drive for system and 7x2TB drives for storage.

With WHS 2011 of course, RAID is required for redundancy since Drive Extender has been axed. For a trial system I am running 1x320GB for system and 3x1TB for storage in RAID 5.

I installed WHS 2011 with BIOS set to AHCI mode. It installed without a hitch, of course all four drives identified individually. Then I went back and set BIOS to RAID mode and set up a RAID 5 array using the onboard RAID controller. WHS 2011 would not boot. So I set BIOS back to AHCI and WHS booted up just fine and then saw the three drives as a single drive.

Now the question is, can I just leave the RAID array as is with AHCI set in the BIOS? Or will it cause problems? It seems once you create a RAID array it keeps even when switching back to AHCI mode. Or should I reinstall WHS with setting the BIOS to RAID mode and set up the RAID array? The system drive is not part of the RAID array so it shouldn't matter, but I guess it does.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

Unless you're using RAID-caliber drives I would not go down this road. Normal SATA drives will fall out of your RAID array and require a rebuild.

There are DE replacements in beta that are close to release, so I would either wait for one of those, jump on the beta bandwagon and use one now, or back off to using RAID 1 which will be much more forgiving using regular SATA drives.

(DriveBender should have an RC any day here. I'm not sure on the timelines for any others.)

 

[mv2devnull]

First, the "onboard controller" does next to nothing and it is CPU and OS driver that do the work. When you change between IDE/AHCI/RAID mode in BIOS, the BIOS reports different device to the OS. OS loads appropriate driver for the reported device. Or it should. Windows needs a little help.

Google finds multiple hits for switching driver after installation. With Windows 7 it is now simple: "change registry, change BIOS, reboot". You did not do that, and therefore the RAID driver was not loaded early enouhg in boot to load the system from the 320 GB drive.

What the "RAID Setup" in BIOS does, is writing metadata about configured arrays into each member disk of the array. The drivers look at the drives and when they find the metadata, they assemble the arrays.

I'd try to get the RAID driver enabled without reinstallation.

Another thing is that the software-based RAID is not so good in RAID 5 mode.

 

[Old Hippie]

(DriveBender should have an RC any day here. I'm not sure on the timelines for any others.)

This hasn't happened yet?

Stick with WHSv1 unless you need over 60TBs (or whatever the limit is) of data space.

 

[Emulex]

my motherboard has just raid or IDE. so you are in AHCI(raid) unless the drives are part of a raid-set. make sure you do a clean install so those partitions are aligned