Setting Up Raid 1 Prior To Clean Vista Install

[PattayaDavid]

Hi,

With new hard drives and operating system, I planned to setup a Raid 1 configuration in BIOS prior to installing the operating system.  I have done this in the past with a single partition, but this time I decided that I wanted multiple partitions with the first partition being occupied by the operating system and installed programs.  Normally, I would have setup the Raid 1 configuration with a single partition then once I have installed the operating system, I would install Acronis Disk Director and add a second partition.

I have an ASUS P5K Deluxe Motherboard and while in BIOS, I made the appropriate selection for a Raid system then using (Control I) I entered the menu page for creating the Raid system.  I proceeded as normal, selecting the drives that made up the Raid system and so on until it came down to choosing the size of the partition.  I initially chose 75GB on a 320GB (298.1GB usable) hard drive to setup the Volume.  After completing this function, I realized that the remaining 223GB of the drive had not been allocated.  While trying to add another partition, I read a message in BIOS that the BIOS supported up to two volumes, partitions (something to this effect) so I chose to setup another volume (whatever) to manage the additional 223GB of available space.  All went well and the Raid Array was established.

After installing the operating system, I opened the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Console and confirmed that Raid Array 0000 was present, however it consisted of two Raid Volumes.  Later, went back into BIOS and created a second Raid 1 configuration for my additional two hard drives.  This time I began with only a single partition (volume) then after I installed Acronis Disk Director, I made three partitions on this Raid setup.  The difference in this Raid system versus the first one is that this one is built on a single volume versus two volumes.

My question, did I screw up when setting up the first Raid Array?  Is their any advantages or disadvantages to having a separate volume for each of the two partitions operating in a Raid 1 configuration?  Disk 1 (C: drive) is displayed as a 75GB drive and Disk 2 (D: drive is displayed as a 223.1GB.  

The second Raid Array (0001) is displayed as a single Disk (Disk 3) and displays (G:, H:, and I: drives).  

Should I save the data on the 2nd Volume (Disk 2) of the first Raid setup, delete the volume, then make a second partition on the 1st volume?  Can this be simply done with no problem or loss of data or operating system? Or, should I just leave it as is since it appears to still be performing the Raid 1 mirroring function over the two disks (volumes).

Thanks,

Pattayadavid

Edited June 22, 2008 by PattayaDavid

[surface]

Been a while since I've dealt with this, expecially with non SCSI controllers, but I'll try to help.

A volume is a container which you can create partitions in, as you have seen already. I'd just leave it alone as it makes no difference with your setup at the moment.

You'd have to look up the documentation on the RAID controller to see if you can delete the second volume on your first array, and expanded the first volume, all without losing data. I wouldn't take the chance or waste my time as it is of no real benefit to you at this point.

In your case, the only benefit to using a single volume is if you decided to expand your system partition at some point, but I haven't tried that with Vista and am not sure it's possible yet with the tools available, though I'd think it would be at this point. In that case you'd have to either leave some space in the volume or delete/resize any other partitions in the volume to make room for the expansion.

[PattayaDavid]

Thanks Surface. My primary concern was whether both drives were being mirrored properly. Even though disk 2 only shows the 223.1GB partition, are you saying that the drives will still be mirrored in the proper order, 75GB operating system partition followed by the 223.1GB partition. It would have been easier to view properly had I only created the one volume with the two partitions, but as you said, as long as it doesn't hurt anything and works properly, it is probably best not to mess with deleting the second partition for now.

Again thanks,

Pattayadavid

[2008bangkok]

Pattaya David it sounds to me like they are not mirrored correctly...

I deal with Raid 1 daily as our work system are setup with this configuration when i do it this is what i do.. lets say i am using 2 250gb hardrives i create the mirrored raid in the bios when i setup windows i just set the c partion to 20gb and leave the remainder as free unallocated space once windows has been installed i then go to disk configuration from within windows and allocated the remaining 230gb to a d or e drive....i only see 1 drive in windows i will only ever see a maxmium of 2 partions( c drive and r the remaining partion) this for me works excellent and is how i send out all the systems sent to our customers...

[PattayaDavid]

Pattaya David it sounds to me like they are not mirrored correctly...

I deal with Raid 1 daily as our work system are setup with this configuration when i do it this is what i do.. lets say i am using 2 250gb hardrives i create the mirrored raid in the bios when i setup windows i just set the c partion to 20gb and leave the remainder as free unallocated space once windows has been installed i then go to disk configuration from within windows and allocated the remaining 230gb to a d or e drive....i only see 1 drive in windows i will only ever see a maxmium of 2 partions( c drive and r the remaining partion) this for me works excellent and is how i send out all the systems sent to our customers...

Hi,

The drives may not be mirrored in the normal fashion, however they are indeed mirrored.  I was installing Advanced 

Windows Care 3 Beta yesterday and during the installation or first time using, it recommended that I do a system restore, which it offered to do for me, followed by a registry backup.  The system restore went without a hitch, but for some reason during the registry backup, it hung up at 33%.  I gave it a good length of time to complete the backup then tryed to restart my computer through Task Manager which failed to respond.  I ended up having to hit the reset button to restart my computer.  Upon restart, I received the usual message indicating that my drives were not properly mirrored and that a rebuild (verification) was being performed.  The Intel Raid Matrix Console indicated that Volume 1 (75GB) concluded it's verification fairly quickly with mirroring restored.  Volume 2 (223.1GB) took well over 4 hours to complete verification.  Raid 1 is now restored.  

When using two drives and only one Volume, do the individual partitions complete their Raid 1 rebuild (verification) at different times?  My experience is that you would not be able to see this in the Intel Matrix Console until all partitions had been rebuilt (verified) first.

I had set my Raid 1 up in BIOS.  I was a bit surprised when I was allowed to setup 2 separate Raid Volumes in BIOS thereby making it unnecessary to partition the drives later.  Like I said, I've never setup a Raid 1 system like this before and was wondering if anyone had any previous experience doing this and if there were any pros or cons to setting up Raid 1 this way.  I can't decide whether to continue with this setup or to delete Volume 2 then create a second partition on drive 1 which will then be mirrored by drive 2.  I would think that using 2 separate volumes would work well when installing 2 operating system ie. both XP and Vista.  Any ideas, anyone?

Thanks,

Pattayadavid

PS. By setting up 2 separate volumes in Raid, would I not have the option of setting, let's say, the boot system volume as Raid 0 and the storage volume as Raid 1? Am I way off base here?

Edited June 23, 2008 by PattayaDavid

[surface]

I can't decide whether to continue with this setup or to delete Volume 2 then create a second partition on drive 1 which will then be mirrored by drive 2. I would think that using 2 separate volumes would work well when installing 2 operating system ie. both XP and Vista.

Right now you have 2 RAID 1 volumes, each with a single partition, 75GB and 223GB. If your current 75GB volume already has a 75GB partition on it, you cannot just create a new 223GB partition on it as the volume is full , you need to expand the volume to fill the entire disk. If volume expansion is possible or not depends on your controller, so you will have to check the documentation. If it is not possible to extend the volume, your only option is to leave it as is, or delete the volumes and create a single RAID 1 volume across the entire array of 2 disks. Again, if you're looking to have a 75GB partition and a 223GB partition anyway, you already have that, you'd simply have it again in a single volume after doing this procedure.

PS. By setting up 2 separate volumes in Raid, would I not have the option of setting, let's say, the boot system volume as Raid 0 and the storage volume as Raid 1? Am I way off base here?

Yes, you would be able to do that, but do you really want to? You would have some more space available to you using RAID 0, but no redundancy and a small performance improvement, if any, especially using an onboard consumer based SATA RAID controller. RAID 0 is useful for large write operations, and your system partition is not going to be writing that much data to disk to see much of an improvement. Depending on the controller, RAID 1 can see a boost in read performance which is what I assume you are looking for with your system partition.

[PattayaDavid]

I can't decide whether to continue with this setup or to delete Volume 2 then create a second partition on drive 1 which will then be mirrored by drive 2. I would think that using 2 separate volumes would work well when installing 2 operating system ie. both XP and Vista.

Right now you have 2 RAID 1 volumes, each with a single partition, 75GB and 223GB. If your current 75GB volume already has a 75GB partition on it, you cannot just create a new 223GB partition on it as the volume is full , you need to expand the volume to fill the entire disk. If volume expansion is possible or not depends on your controller, so you will have to check the documentation. If it is not possible to extend the volume, your only option is to leave it as is, or delete the volumes and create a single RAID 1 volume across the entire array of 2 disks. Again, if you're looking to have a 75GB partition and a 223GB partition anyway, you already have that, you'd simply have it again in a single volume after doing this procedure.

PS. By setting up 2 separate volumes in Raid, would I not have the option of setting, let's say, the boot system volume as Raid 0 and the storage volume as Raid 1? Am I way off base here?

Yes, you would be able to do that, but do you really want to? You would have some more space available to you using RAID 0, but no redundancy and a small performance improvement, if any, especially using an onboard consumer based SATA RAID controller. RAID 0 is useful for large write operations, and your system partition is not going to be writing that much data to disk to see much of an improvement. Depending on the controller, RAID 1 can see a boost in read performance which is what I assume you are looking for with your system partition.

Thanks for your reply Surface.  You're correct, I won't be writing that much data to my drives therefore I have never actually even considered the use of Raid 0; I only mentioned it as a possible use when setting up 2 volumes instead of 1 volume and 1 partition to help me to understand a potential purpose of using multiple volumes within a Raid setup.  I suppose that you could conclude that this is one of the benefits of a 2 volume Raid, but my overall concern is whether there are any negatives associated with doing so versus using a single volume Raid with 2 partitions.  I have only recently performed a clean Vista install and I can, if necessary, delete both volumes and create a new Raid 1 system using 2 partitions if it is determined that it would be better in the long run. This is where I appeal to ThaiVisa.com forum readers for their input.

Bottom line, is their any difference in the functionality of a 2 volume Raid 1 system as opposed to a single volume Raid 1 system utilizing 2 partitions?

Thanks,

Pattayadavid

[2008bangkok]

David..

There are plus and minus's for all configuration Forget the two Raid configurations...how safe do you want to be..

Just create one Raid 1 mirrored drive with 2 partitions..job done

[Crushdepth]

I just don't see the point in having 2 raid volumes on the same physical disks. Suggest you'd be better off with 1 raid volume and 2 partitions, keep life simple :-)

[surface]

Bottom line, is their any difference in the functionality of a 2 volume Raid 1 system as opposed to a single volume Raid 1 system utilizing 2 partitions?

The only difference is that you are limited to creating partitions within the size of the volumes, which appears to be fine with you.

2008bangkok and Crushdepth are both correct right in that there is no point in having 2 volumes, BUT, you have already done it. So your choices are leave it as is or blow out the existing volumes and create a single volume. Creating a new volume would mean reinstalling the OS, unless you want to try backing up the system partition and restoring it, assuming you have tools that can reliably do so on a RAID volume. It's simply a matter of spending the time to do something that will give no benefit over the current configuration.

[2008bangkok]

It's simply a matter of spending the time to do something that will give no benefit over the current configuration.

If the OP has this setup for a while then i would say leave it but as its a new clean install and just for the fact then it will become more complicated later then i would highly recommend re doing it with a 1 mirror 2 partion configuration...believe me

[PattayaDavid]

Thanks for all of the input. I'll first check to see if it is possible to delete the second volume and expand the 1st volume using either the Intel Raid Matrix software or Acronis Disk Director before initiating another clean install or keeping my configuration as is. Does anyone know if it is possible to do the above without deleting both volumes and starting over?

Pattayadavid

[sjaak327]

Good question, whatever you do, don't consider arconis, not because it is a bad program, but because it isn't aware of the volume setup of your intel raid controller, if you use arconis, you would mirror a drive on two mirror volumes, which would actually not be a good idea.

So the only thing you could try is to delete that second volume and try to expand your first volume using the Intel Matrix Storage Console, but as far as I know, you won't be able to do that without deleting both volumes.

[think_too_mut]

Bottom line, is their any difference in the functionality of a 2 volume Raid 1 system as opposed to a single volume Raid 1 system utilizing 2 partitions?

Of course there is: the whole point of mirroring (RAID-1) is protection from single HDD failure.

M1 and M2 must be on different disks and on different channels.

What protection you have if 1 disk fails? Both mirrors (being on the same disk) are gone and you have nothing other than memories of your PC struggling to keep useless mirror.

[sjaak327]

^ they way I read his story, he has created two raid volumes on two identical 320GB disk, so if one disk fails, he still has two degraded raid volumes, as both volumes are on both disks. Not the way I would set it up, but it's not useless. Next time, just setup one raid volume, as the raid volume just represents the disk so to speak. Then you can still partition your diks (raid volume) any way you like, you do this using Vista's disk manager, or Arconis or whatever partitioning software you want.

[PattayaDavid]

Hi All,

I finally did it. I backed up all of my data then deleted Volume 2. I tried every way I could to increase the size of Volume 1 from 75GB to its full size of 298.1GB, but to no avail. I ended up deleting Volume 1 and creating a single Volume at the full capacity of the drive and will begin the process of reloading my drive and setting up partitions tomorrow. I appreciate all of the input that you guys have provided.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to separate the operating system from installed programs? I would like to have a boot partition with nothing more than the operating system and install all of my programs, data etc. on separate partitions. I know that it can be done, but have never found any instructions as to how to perform the operation.

Thanks,

Pattayadavid

[surface]

Hi All,

I finally did it. I backed up all of my data then deleted Volume 2. I tried every way I could to increase the size of Volume 1 from 75GB to its full size of 298.1GB, but to no avail. I ended up deleting Volume 1 and creating a single Volume at the full capacity of the drive and will begin the process of reloading my drive and setting up partitions tomorrow. I appreciate all of the input that you guys have provided.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to separate the operating system from installed programs? I would like to have a boot partition with nothing more than the operating system and install all of my programs, data etc. on separate partitions. I know that it can be done, but have never found any instructions as to how to perform the operation.

Thanks,

Pattayadavid

I don't know if this is what you're actually looking for, so sorry if I misread you, but here goes...

When installing an application, you know all all those prompts that you click Yes, Next, or Continue on? At some point they were asking you where you wanted to install the app, so next time read what they are prompting you for before clicking yes or next, and change the location for installation when prompted to confirm the path. So instead of c:\program files\app name\ change the path to d:\app name\ or d:\program files\app name\ if you want to keep them all under a single directory. Replace d:\ with whatever partition you are looking to install your apps on.

[PattayaDavid]

Hi All,

I finally did it. I backed up all of my data then deleted Volume 2. I tried every way I could to increase the size of Volume 1 from 75GB to its full size of 298.1GB, but to no avail. I ended up deleting Volume 1 and creating a single Volume at the full capacity of the drive and will begin the process of reloading my drive and setting up partitions tomorrow. I appreciate all of the input that you guys have provided.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to separate the operating system from installed programs? I would like to have a boot partition with nothing more than the operating system and install all of my programs, data etc. on separate partitions. I know that it can be done, but have never found any instructions as to how to perform the operation.

Thanks,

Pattayadavid

I don't know if this is what you're actually looking for, so sorry if I misread you, but here goes...

When installing an application, you know all all those prompts that you click Yes, Next, or Continue on? At some point they were asking you where you wanted to install the app, so next time read what they are prompting you for before clicking yes or next, and change the location for installation when prompted to confirm the path. So instead of c:\program files\app name\ change the path to d:\app name\ or d:\program files\app name\ if you want to keep them all under a single directory. Replace d:\ with whatever partition you are looking to install your apps on.

Hi Surface,

Yeah, I finally got my Raid systems setup correctly and hard drives partitioned.  I was a bit stumped at first when trying to partition Disk 1 containing my operating system.  I have 4 320GB hard drives separated into 2 Raid 1 systems.  Partitioning the storage drives of the second Raid 1 system was quite easy using Acronis Disk Director.  I established the first partition using the full free space on the drive then repartitioned a second and third time to create my 3 partitions.  When I tried to follow the same process with 1st Raid 1 system, it appeared to take, but when my computer was restarted, no changes were made to Disk 1.  I tried it several times to no avail.  Finally, I resized C: drive on Disk 1 then I was allowed to create 2 additional partitions using the unallocated space as there was no longer any freespace on the drive.  I guess that the C: drive, being an active boot partition, has to be partitioned differently than primary storage drive partitioning.

I have tried installing some programs to different drives when prompted for installation location, but by doing this, it brings up a lot of what-if questions for me.  Take the Opera browser for example, I can install the program on D: drive, but all of the mail, profile, bookmarks, favorites etc. will be stored in User/AppData/Local & Roaming folders.  Microsoft Office (Outlook) and other programs store their informations similarly.  I followed some instructions, found on another site, explaining how to move folders such as Documents, Contacts, Pictures, Music etc. to D: drive, but it became a little confusing for me.  I wish that all pertinent data would be stored with the original program.  Let's say that I have installed all of my programs on D: drive then need to do a clean install of Windows Vista, will these programs still be bootable through D: drive?  I would imagine that there would be no desktop icons or any evidence of these programs contained within Windows after the clean install.  Would the programs have to be installed again?  This has always been a confusing situation for me.  When I do a clean install now, I go into the Windows Users/AppData/Local and Roaming folders, among others and copy folders such as Opera and Outlook which contain my profiles, mail etc.  

I would appreciate any suggestions as to a means to better organize my drives that would make for a less involved process when performing a clean install of Windows.

Thanks,

Pattayadavid

[surface]

For moving system folders, you can usually right click, go to Properties, and then Location and change it to wherever you like.

With Outlook it's pretty easy to point to your existing pst files, no need to start fresh each time unless you don't want all of you old data.

As far as installed apps, it just depends on if they've placed everything into a single root folder or made new registry keys, added or updated system files, etc.

There will always be some programs you have to reinstall upon a fresh install of Windows, such as MS Office, Adobe apps, drivers, system utilities. I don't mind as it's a chance to download the latest versions. How often do you need to reinstall Windows anyway? I usually manage to get by for at least couple of years before I find it necessary. Since I don't install so much garbage anymore it might be even longer.