Vista does not support RAID or Volume Striping

[Arthur]

After four hours, I just got off the phone with Monica, a Microsoft
Professional Support Engineer who stated that RAID and Volume Striping were
only supported under Vista Ultimate, although the options were offered under
the other Vista versions, they were not supported.

What a frustration and a let down!

Arthur

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Why RAID is (usually) a Terrible Idea
http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles?&id=29

RAID Explained
http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles.php?id=24

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User


---------------------------------------------------------------

:

After four hours, I just got off the phone with Monica, a Microsoft
Professional Support Engineer who stated that RAID and Volume Striping were
only supported under Vista Ultimate, although the options were offered under
the other Vista versions, they were not supported.

What a frustration and a let down!

Arthur

 

[Kerry Brown]

Software raid is never a good idea. If you need RAID get a Vista compatible
RAID controller card. Then it won't matter what version of Vista you use.

 

[Arthur]

I have and tried both onboard Gigabyte P35DS3R motherboard RAID controllers:
Intel ICH9R and Gigabyte's own (both Vista certified).

When any of these are enabled, Vista will not boot, period. The MS
Professional Support Engineer could not make it work either and declared
RAID and/or Volume Striping was only supported under Vista Ultimate.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Why RAID is (usually) a Terrible Idea
http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles?&id=29

RAID Explained
http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles.php?id=24

I would not recommend it to muppets.

ss.

 

[Arthur]

Thanks Carey, but I think that I am in one of the situations wher RAID 0
would be beneficial: video editing (large files). SATA 3Gb/s provides 60MB/s
from any single drive and the total throughput only over struping over 5
drives; I am attempting to stripe a volume over two identical drives to get
120MB/s throughput for video editing.

Does that make sense?

 

[Michael Walraven]

My Dell XPS 410 has RAID implimented in the BIOS (raid 0 striped) and is
running Vista Home premium.

Perhaps this is not 'Vista' supporting the RAID but the mother board.

Vista reports that the device is 'ARRAY' rather than the actual hardware
identifications of the two drives. Again this could be a result of the BIOS
doing the RAID stuff.

I would think that RAID at the BIOS or hardware card level would be
transparent to the operating system.

Michael

..

 

[Leythos]

After four hours, I just got off the phone with Monica, a Microsoft
Professional Support Engineer who stated that RAID and Volume Striping were
only supported under Vista Ultimate, although the options were offered under
the other Vista versions, they were not supported.

What a frustration and a let down!

You really should be using RAID on a controller card, not using Windows
to make the RAID for you. Soft RAID is not a good idea on any platform.

RAID controller cards are cheap and the nice thing is that the cards are
supported under Vista - any version.

--

Leythos
- Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
- Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented worker" is like calling a
drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"
(e-mail address removed) (remove 999 for proper email address)

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

There are two basic ways to implement a RAID solution, software and
hardware. For a software solution, the operating system must support it. For
a hardware solution, the operating system is immaterial.

In the software mode, an OS like Vista Ultimate or XP Pro must be installed
to support striping or disk spanning. It sees two or more physical disks and
handles the necessary configuration to implement the desired array.

In hardware mode, the components and their drivers handle the configuration.
The operating system only sees the one volume and handles it like it would
any single drive, even if it's a multi-disk RAID5. For this type of RAID
solution, any OS can be installed.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Augustus]

Why RAID is (usually) a Terrible Idea
http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles?&id=29

I and most others I know have seen huge increases in boot time performance,
as well application load speeds. Night and day difference usually. As for it
being trouble prone or problematic for reliability, it's no more so than any
multiple drive system. Not for the non-savvy user, but you don't have to be
an certfied IT pro either. My twin 74gig raptors get Ghosted to a 1 Gig NAS
device nightly. 2 years without failure. They also get cooled properly. If
one did fail, it'd be back on line and imaged within an hour from the spare
I keep on hand. Any critical work or data files don't go to the RAID0, they
go to a 500Gig SATA data drive on the same system which also gets Ghosted
nightly. Anyone who says RAID0 nets virtually zero speed gain is just plain
wrong. Now software RAID, that's a waste of time.

 

[Leythos]

As for it
being trouble prone or problematic for reliability, it's no more so than any
multiple drive system.

Wrong - completely. In a RAID-1 system either drive can fail and you
won't have any loss. In a RAID-0 system, if either drive is lost then
you have a complete/total loss.

--

Leythos
- Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
- Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented worker" is like calling a
drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"
(e-mail address removed) (remove 999 for proper email address)

 

[Augustus]

Wrong - completely. In a RAID-1 system either drive can fail and you
won't have any loss. In a RAID-0 system, if either drive is lost then
you have a complete/total loss.

Not what I meant....I was talking about the probabilty of a harware failure,
period. I'm perfectly aware of what a drive failure consequence in a RAID0
means versus a drive failure in a RAID1 setup. But the probability is the
same for hardware failure in each. The recovery and data loss differences
for RAID0 and RAID1 are obvious. Which is why the RAID0 array is for the OS
and apps you want the speed/access gains from. I don't know of too many
people using RAID1 on a home system used primarily for productivity and
gaming.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Both work fine in any version of Vista. The problem is either the driver was
wrong or loaded incorrectly during the installation or the settings in the
BIOS are not correct.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Not what I meant....I was talking about the probabilty of a harware
failure, period. I'm perfectly aware of what a drive failure
consequence in a RAID0 means versus a drive failure in a RAID1
setup. But the probability is the same for hardware failure in each.
The recovery and data loss differences for RAID0 and RAID1 are
obvious. Which is why the RAID0 array is for the OS and apps you want
the speed/access gains from. I don't know of too many people using
RAID1 on a home system used primarily for productivity and gaming.

I have twin Raptors too, in Matrix RAID. If you have a Intel chipset, and
are using that for the array, you can use Matrix RAID to have both RAID-0
and RAID-1 partitions on the same two drives, in case you did not know. It
works really well. The RAID-1 data backup has saved me a ot of time and
hassle when one of the drives failed.

The RAID-0 partition is used for OS, apps and Desktop user folder, while all
the other shell user folders are on the RAID-1 partition. I have other
drives for [True]images, files, video, TV-recording, etc etc, and all
essential data is backed up on a server through network every night,
incrementally, and those disks are in RAID-1 too.

I also keep photos and stuff archived on DVD, and precious files are backed
up off-site on my friend's server, in case of fire. I return the favour for
him.

ss.

 

[Leythos]

Not what I meant....I was talking about the probabilty of a harware failure,
period. I'm perfectly aware of what a drive failure consequence in a RAID0
means versus a drive failure in a RAID1 setup. But the probability is the
same for hardware failure in each. The recovery and data loss differences
for RAID0 and RAID1 are obvious. Which is why the RAID0 array is for the OS
and apps you want the speed/access gains from. I don't know of too many
people using RAID1 on a home system used primarily for productivity and
gaming.

Then, since you don't know many that use RAID-1, the failure rate for
the user, what they "Feel", is twice as high or more, considering that
if either drive fails they have a total loss. If they had used RAID-1,
they would not experience any loss of use.

The point is that your post made it seem like there was no failure
difference between using RAID-0 and RAID-1, but there is a clear
difference if you care about being able to use your computer. Face it,
people that use RAID-0 should be using it on computers that NEED RAID-0
- like for video editing and such, and they should be using it on a
secondary array, not the OS array, and they should have GOOD QUALITY
BACKUPS, nightly at least.

So, typical home user, installs two drives, in RAID-0, they have at
least twice the chance that their computer will fail in a way that they
can't do anything until they purchase at least 1 new drive and rebuild
it completely from scratch. A typical home user installs two drives, in
RAID-1, they have less chance that their computer will fail in a way
that they can't do anything until they purchase at least 1 drive - since
they can continue to work on the remaining good drive until they get a
new replacement drive for the one that goes bad.

Yes, if you only look at the failure of a DRIVE, the rate of failure is
the same, but who the heck just looks at the "Drive" when the computer
user is going to look at "why can't my computer boot up today"...

--

Leythos
- Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
- Calling an illegal alien an "undocumented worker" is like calling a
drug dealer an "unlicensed pharmacist"
(e-mail address removed) (remove 999 for proper email address)

 

[Kerry Brown]

Two drives you have a higher probability that one of them will fail. For
either drive you have the same probability that it will fail as if you had
one drive. In other words more drives means you have a higher probability
that you will see a drive failure. With RAID 0 this means you have a higher
probability that you will lose data. With any RAID method that uses striping
if one drive fails you don't have all the data on the other drives. If the
array can't be rebuilt (RAID 0) and you don't have a backup the data is
gone. Even sending it out to a data recovery specialist won't help as you
don't have all the data. Worst case scenario without a RAID method that uses
striping the drive can be sent to a data recovery specialist and the data
recovered. Worst case scenario with striping the data is gone.

 

[dennis@home]

Two drives you have a higher probability that one of them will fail. For
either drive you have the same probability that it will fail as if you had
one drive. In other words more drives means you have a higher probability
that you will see a drive failure. With RAID 0 this means you have a
higher probability that you will lose data. With any RAID method that uses
striping if one drive fails you don't have all the data on the other
drives. If the array can't be rebuilt (RAID 0) and you don't have a backup
the data is gone. Even sending it out to a data recovery specialist won't
help as you don't have all the data. Worst case scenario without a RAID
method that uses striping the drive can be sent to a data recovery
specialist and the data recovered. Worst case scenario with striping the
data is gone.

RAID arrays are only better at keeping data if the mean time to repair is
kept short.
A RAID 5 that takes a week to get around to fixing isn't much more reliable
than just having the disks.
This is worse the larger the number of drives in the array which is why you
have hot standbys to minimize the repair time.
Unless you do the math you cannot state that RAID is better or worse in any
particular circumstance

 

[Kerry Brown]

RAID arrays are only better at keeping data if the mean time to repair is
kept short.
A RAID 5 that takes a week to get around to fixing isn't much more
reliable than just having the disks.
This is worse the larger the number of drives in the array which is why
you have hot standbys to minimize the repair time.
Unless you do the math you cannot state that RAID is better or worse in
any particular circumstance

The probability of a drive failure has nothing to do with RAID. More drives,
more chance that you will see a failure. If you use cheap consumer drives in
a RAID array there is an increased chance you will see errors because of
timing issues. These errors may cause data loss but technically this isn't a
drive failure. RAID doesn't really have a place in most computers.

 

[Synapse Syndrome]

Face it,
people that use RAID-0 should be using it on computers that NEED
RAID-0 - like for video editing and such, and they should be using it
on a secondary array, not the OS array, and they should have GOOD
QUALITY BACKUPS, nightly at least.

Rubbish. The OS drive is the one that will benefit most from RAID-0.
Having application files, the pagefile and the Desktop folder on that drive
makes sense too. It is data that needs to be kept off the drive.

When I have had a drive failure in the past, I have only lost data on the
RAID-0 partition (using Matrix RAID) and everything on the RAID-1 partition
was still immediately available, which meant a lot at the time, with work
deadlines.

All that was lost was the OS and application files, as well as work in
progress on the Desktop. Apart from what was on the Desktop, everything was
replacable from installation CD/DVDs.

I am now more cautious to such a failure, and make automated weekly image
backups of the C: drive, purely for being able to get back to a working
system very quickly if it happens again, and I save important workfiles
within RAID-1 shell user folders instead of the Desktop folder, which I
choose to keep on the RAID-0 partition, for performance.

I only backup the RAID-0 partition for speed of getting the system up again.

So, typical home user, installs two drives, in RAID-0, they have at
least twice the chance that their computer will fail in a way that
they can't do anything until they purchase at least 1 new drive and
rebuild it completely from scratch.

No. They will not be able to rebuild the RAID-0 drive at all in such an
event, unless they have made a clone image of the drive. If they have, they
can restore that to the single working drive, and be in a normal,
single-drive situation. If they do not have the drive space to do that, as
they now have half the capacity, they can only restore the most essential
files for getting the system up again - the OS and applications, and every
drive is large enough for that.

ss.

 

[NoStop]

You really should be using RAID on a controller card, not using Windows
to make the RAID for you. Soft RAID is not a good idea on any platform.

RAID controller cards are cheap and the nice thing is that the cards are
supported under Vista - any version.

And you failed to add that most of these cheap "raid" controllers are fake
raid, ie. software based.

Cheers.

--
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