Stay away from sata/ide Raid0

[Gomce]

Ok, the config:
Abit KV8 Max3
2800+ 64bit
1 gb ddr400 pqi
2 x 80 GB Maxtors is SATA raid0 via the Via sata raid chip
Gigabyte 9600pro
Sweex UPS 1000vA

This is my work rig, my gaming rig is Nforce3, 3200+ at 2.4ghz, 1gb kingmax ddr500, 9800pro, 80gb maxtor sata

-
Situation:
Most of the time my 2 pcs are turned on, the main work rig is used for webdesign, heavy multitasking etc, it's super stable and it's connected to the UPS. It's flaweless.

Few days ago the power went off. The gaming rig was shut down because it's not connected to the UPS. The main/work rig stayed on. I shut every open application, and turned the PC off.
The next day, I turn the main rig on, powers up and everything, and in windows I turned several applications on at once and the PC froze. Didn't froze actually but some app seems was lagging and I didn't want to wait for it to resolve itself and I just hit the Reset button. Then, when it tried to go to windows I got UNABLE_TO_MOUNT_BOOT_VOLUME 0x00000000 error something.
I tried safe mode, nothing...

I put another spare IDE drive in the machine as primary and tried to access the RAID0 array, gave me bad formatted drive or something. Couldnt access it. Turned out the whole MFT was messed up. I spend the last 4 days with various programs and luckily I recovered most of my important files.

I'm not a newb, I tried everything. To fix the MBR, CHKDSK in the windows recovery console, everything I could think of. I could bring the Raid setup back.

I broke the raid0 array, now I run the disks as separate ones, they weren't demaged.

 

[jpeyton]

Anand's Own Words:

"But for the vast majority of desktop users and gamers alike, save your money and stay away from raid-0. If you do insist on getting two drives, you are much better off putting them into a raid-1 array to have a live backup of your data. The performance hit of raid-1 is just as negligible as the performance gains of raid-0..."

 

[boyRacer]

No backup eh... tsk tsk.

 

[CraigRT]

yes Raid-0 is fairly useless

 

[MercenaryForHire]

What a shocker, a disk setup with no fault tolerance isn't fault tolerant. :roll:

RAID-0 is quickly becoming the PC equivalent of nitrous oxide, in that there's lots of dumb no0bs installing it without considering the precautions and dangers, and whining about it when their data/engine sh!ts itself.

- M4H

 

[Gomce]

My most recent backup was 2 weeks ago. I need to get a software that does daily buckups, recommendations?

 

[uOpt]

What is your backup medium?

 

[aixenv]

veritas

 

[Zucarita9000]

SecondCopy 2000 is the program I use for backup.
It's really simple to use, and I have it configured to create copies of my work folders every 12 hours to an external USB HDD.
The good thing about it is that it doesn't create a single backup file like the rest, it simply copies the files to another location. You can still browse and use your backup volume.

But the best thing is that it isn't bloated. It's fast and actually very reliable.

 

[tweeve2002]

I have been doing RAID 0 for years now, the most important thing that i have learned besides backing up my stuff is to buy good reliable hard drives, do your homework before you buy the drives.

Right now I have two RAID 0 set ups in my system, on onboard and another on the PCI bus, Both work great. One thing I have noticed when one of my drives started going bad was that the monitoring software that comes with the RAID helps point out hardware problems before they become a problem. I was able to replace the drive and was able to back everything up. This X-mas I am gatting another 600GB of drive space with two more 300GB SATA drives. 1TB of Drive space WOOT.

 

[boomerang]

Originally posted by: Gomce
My most recent backup was 2 weeks ago. I need to get a software that does daily buckups, recommendations?

Acronis True Image 8.0

 

[mmcdonalataocdotgov]

If you can afford it, and need the added access speed (neglible for most users) then do RAID 1+0 (RAID 10).

I have used 4 - 250GB SATA (8MB) drives on an Abit board, and it worked fine. I did have a single instance of the hard drives not responding, but that was fixed with the RAID utility at start up.

When I had this rig, I used a 40GB PATA drive as the boot drive, put the windows swap file on it (hard set to 4GB with 2GB RAM) and then put my PhotoShop scratch files on the "D:" drive. I think just having two physical disks for the swap/scratch files made more difference than the RAID 0 portion.

The rigs (there were 5 of them) have since been switched to a 40GB C:, 750GB spanned D:, and 250GB removeable E:. The E: is doing the backup work.

 

[rammstein junkie]

hey gomce how do you like that Kingmax memory? i was thinking of buying some...

 

[blakeatwork]

Had a home customer who had EVERYTHING on a striped drive....

they were more then a little po'd when i told them their data had gone the way of the dinosaurs...

Still gotta sale out of it...

 

[Gomce]

Originally posted by: rammstein junkie
hey gomce how do you like that Kingmax memory? i was thinking of buying some...

Not complaining,
I run the 3200+ athlon 64 from 2.2 to 2.4
But I am very busy and didn't try to overclock to 2.5ghz or so, but I'm sure the ram can handle it.

 

[yhelothar]

R-Studio rocks.
I was in the same situation where my RAID had mass corruption. I ended up recovering 95% of everything with R-Studio.
Windows wouldn't detect the drive at all.
I had to delete the RAID array and format, then use R-Studio to recover.
I run them seperately now. It's a lot slower extracting large files, which I do very often.
I guess the trade off is worth it for the extra reliability I get.

 

[elecrzy]

plz do not use raid-0 for storage, use it for the OS if you need to. and if you do want raid go with 0+1. i recommend raid 5. if you do insist on using raid 0 for OS and storage, do daily backup or you will end up crying.