Software Raid 1 on Windows 7 and Resynching

[Cyborg]

So I have a software raid 1 set up with windows 7 (my mobo can do hardware as well, but went with software initially and didn't feel like starting over to go to hardware) for two HDDs (media/documents, not primary boot). Anytime I have any sort of abnormal shutdown or reboots, or whatever, the drives need to resynchronize. Takes a few hours to get things resynched. Very annoying. There must be a better way to manage this. If you are using raid, how are you guys dealing with this? Almost tempted to abandon raid entirely.

 

[Fayd]

So I have a software raid 1 set up with windows 7 (my mobo can do hardware as well, but went with software initially and didn't feel like starting over to go to hardware) for two HDDs (media/documents, not primary boot). Anytime I have any sort of abnormal shutdown or reboots, or whatever, the drives need to resynchronize. Takes a few hours to get things resynched. Very annoying. There must be a better way to manage this. If you are using raid, how are you guys dealing with this? Almost tempted to abandon raid entirely.

i gave up with windows software raid, and used the onboard fakeraid controller on the motherboard. some posts i've seen on this forum recommended heavily against this, but after trying software raid with 2 different configurations (different mobos, different hdd's) i've given up on dynamic disks entirely.

i moved to AMD fakeraid, and it's been rock solid, even with consumer level drives.

 

[Sable]

Similar setup to my system. I've only had my RAIDs spaz out a couple of times from reboots. (overclocking fails 😉 )

The drives resync in the background so not sure what the problem is.

I'm using the Intel onboard RAID btw.

Can I ask why you have your greens in non park mode and if there's a good reason for it how did you do it?

 

[Cyborg]

Similar setup to my system. I've only had my RAIDs spaz out a couple of times from reboots. (overclocking fails 😉 )

The drives resync in the background so not sure what the problem is.

I'm using the Intel onboard RAID btw.

Can I ask why you have your greens in non park mode and if there's a good reason for it how did you do it?

I went with greens cause of cost and noise. Didn't want loud HDDs. However, problem with greens are they auto-park more frequently to save energy - do it enough and it impacts drive life/reliability. You're also waiting a bit to load programs/games or make saves as the drive engages. So I have the auto-park disabled through WD's wdidle3 software. Google it and you'll find instructions on how to use it.

While the greens probably only spin at 5400 RPM, I get pretty good data transfer rates for what I use them for:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 152.034 MB/s
Sequential Write : 145.212 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 53.123 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 86.459 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.619 MB/s [ 151.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.465 MB/s [ 357.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 2.514 MB/s [ 613.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.433 MB/s [ 349.8 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [E: 0.0% (0.1/931.5 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/07/08 10:41:57
OS : Windows 7 SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)
------------

Now only if there was a way to not have them resync needlessly!

 

[Cerb]

Now only if there was a way to not have them resync needlessly!

Mobo fakeRAID is one option. Another that's decent for consumer stuff is what you may find referred to as a, "redneck RAID." Just have two disks, with some backup software periodically syncing disk 1 to disk 2. You don't get transparent fault tolerance with a such a backup, of course, but downtime is not generally a huge concern for home systems.

If you either already have backups, don't need backups, the RAID is a backup other data, or you rely on it being up for billable hours, I'd definitely try the mobo RAID.