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TenOC's avatar
TenOC
Nomad
Jan 29, 2015

Setting up a RAID 0 LSI SER523 Rev B2 4 Port.

I have a "new to me" Dell T7500 workstation. Win7-64 4TB, 3Tb, 2Tb and 250Gb HD. The OS is on the 250Gb "C" drive. The other drives are only for data.

1 Should I plug the data large hard drives into the motherboard label HDD or SATA? I plug the 4Tb into the HDD-2 socket. The on board pre-boot shows the drive as only 2+ Gb. After booting up, the 4Tb drives appears to work OK. However,today (due to a power outage during boot ?) windows did a check disk and identify all(?) the files as "orphan". Now ALL my files are "read only". . . :M . . I do not want this to happen again because my data is important.

2. I do have a LSI Logic SER523 REV B2 4 PORT PCI-X card that I am think about using as a RAID 0, The LSI manual is too complicated for me. . . . :h , , , Is there a short "layman's" how to or video some place? I did a Google search without any luck

Thanks

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  • TenOC's avatar
    TenOC
    Nomad
    Jan 29, 2015
    TenOC wrote:
    I have a "new to me" Dell T7500 workstation. Win7-64 4TB, 3Tb, 2Tb and 250Gb HD. The OS is on the 250Gb "C" drive. The other drives are only for data.

    1 Should I plug the data large hard drives into the motherboard label HDD or SATA? I plug the 4Tb into the HDD-2 socket. The on board pre-boot shows the drive as only 2+ Gb. After booting up, the 4Tb drives appears to work OK. However,today (due to a power outage during boot ?) windows did a check disk and identify all(?) the files as "orphan". Now ALL my files are "read only". . . :M . . I do not want this to happen again because my data is important.

    2. I do have a LSI Logic SER523 REV B2 4 PORT PCI-X card that I am think about using as a RAID 0, The LSI manual is too complicated for me. . . . :h , , , Is there a short "layman's" how to or video some place? I did a Google search without any luck

    Thanks


    The problem is I am not sure that the motherboard can handle these large HDD -- 3Tb and 4Tb. However, I am very (?) sure that the PCI card can. Can I use the PCI card to set up a non-RAID????? . . :h
  • MrWizard's avatar
    MrWizard
    Moderator
    Jan 29, 2015
    Now you have me confused
    As AFAIK
    RAID either mirrors duplicates discs, in case of failure RAID 0
    Or spreads the data across drives for speed RAID 1
    This means any particular file has data on both drives, no single file is on a single drive, it is in pieces on both drives
    And then there is a raid version where you have RAID 0, And RAID 1
    Where a set of drives act as one drive, and that is mirrored by another set of drives

    But to have some discreet files on one drive and other files on another drive is NOT RAID at all

    I have three external hard drives, with backup files and data storage they are not RAID
    And I our the pc program have too remember what is what and what drive to use when backing up our saving new data
  • TenOC's avatar
    TenOC
    Nomad
    Jan 29, 2015
    I do not want to mirror my data. I want EACH disk to hold different data. I think his is RAID 0. I am wrong. I want a non-raid. This card tries to set up RAID
  • GordonThree's avatar
    GordonThree
    Explorer
    Jan 29, 2015
    "The LSI manual is too complicated for me. . . ." seems to be a good reason???
  • LittleBill's avatar
    LittleBill
    Explorer
    Jan 29, 2015
    if he has a dedicated raid controller, there is no reason not to build out a raid 1 on it vs the windows software version
  • GordonThree's avatar
    GordonThree
    Explorer
    Jan 29, 2015
    You don't have to mess with special controllers to setup a raid 1 mirror. Go into Disk Management, find the drive with your data on it (NOT C DRIVE), right click and choose add mirror. Pick another drive that is the same size or larger. Windows will automatically copy over all the information.

    Video here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecb9UZZqP-w
  • bwanshoom's avatar
    bwanshoom
    Explorer
    Jan 29, 2015
    I think what you want in this instance is RAID 1. RAID 0 writes data across multiple disks and is used for performance. RAID 1 mirrors the data across multiple disks and is used for fault tolerance.

    This article does a pretty good job of explaining the differences.

    Edit: Also, if power outages are possible with a system that has data you don't want to lose, invest in a UPS. It will protect against temporary outages. APC and CyberPower both make good units.

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