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Adding RAID 0 to and exisiting WHS system drive RRS feed

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    I have an existing WHS setup with 4 750G drives. I would like to turn the system drive into a RAID 0 mirror since from what I have read if the system drive fails it seems like it will be a pain to recover the system. All my shared folders are duplicated so if a non system drive fails I am covered. In fact it already happened and everything recovered just fine by removing the failed drive and replacing it.

     

    Anyway, does WHS work OK with RAID arrays (I have an embedded Intel Matrix RAID controller on the motherboard) and if so can I add the mirror after the fact?

     

    Thanks in advance for any help.

     

    -Bill

    Saturday, August 30, 2008 1:18 AM

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    WHS will install on a RAID array (assuming you can install the proper drivers) and will function just fine, however there are potential issues you may want to consider first. First, RAID isn't a supported technology for Windows Home Server; RAID is not part of Microsoft's vision for the product. Second, if you should ever have to reinstall WHS (e.g. if your OS becomes corrupt somehow), you may find it a much greater challenge on a RAID array than on a disk.

    If you decide to proceed, RAID 0 is striping, and is done only for performance reasons where you can afford to lose the data on the disk. Mirroring is RAID 1. You will have to create your array before you install Windows Home Server on your hardware; you won't be able to create an array after the fact without wiping the disks being added to the array.


    Saturday, August 30, 2008 2:58 AM
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    WHS will install on a RAID array (assuming you can install the proper drivers) and will function just fine, however there are potential issues you may want to consider first. First, RAID isn't a supported technology for Windows Home Server; RAID is not part of Microsoft's vision for the product. Second, if you should ever have to reinstall WHS (e.g. if your OS becomes corrupt somehow), you may find it a much greater challenge on a RAID array than on a disk.

    If you decide to proceed, RAID 0 is striping, and is done only for performance reasons where you can afford to lose the data on the disk. Mirroring is RAID 1. You will have to create your array before you install Windows Home Server on your hardware; you won't be able to create an array after the fact without wiping the disks being added to the array.


    Saturday, August 30, 2008 2:58 AM
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    Thanks for the reply.

     

    I meant to ask about RAID 1 (Mirroring) not RAID 0, sorry. So I guess my question still stands, can I add a mirror after the fact? It seems to me that mirroring your system drive would be a good idea, if it fails it's easy to recover it. If it is not mirrored and it fails the recovery procedure seems to be a big pain. It shouldn't matter whether RAID is part of the WHS server plan or not, if it is implmented in hardware the OS should not care, as long as drivers are available.

     

    Saturday, August 30, 2008 7:13 PM
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    With most RAID controllers, you can't take a disk that was not part of a RAID array originally and build a RAID array with it without losing the data on the disk. This is because the RAID controller (or the driver software, in the case of motherboard RAID, which is software, not hardware, RAID) controls the physical disk layout, not the operating system.

    Once you've created an array, install Windows Home Server and experiment a bit. Then I would recommend you try a server reinstallation so you will be familiar with the process. Some users have had no problem, but others have been unable to reinstall without wiping the entire server. (As I said previously, you will still need the ability to recover via reinstallation if your OS becomes corrupt somehow, for example as a result of installing some software that turns out not to be compatible with WHS.)
    Saturday, August 30, 2008 9:00 PM
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    Thanks, it seems like I may be out of luck. I can't risk my existing WHS installation, it has over a terabyte of data stored on it. I guess my only choice is to back that data up somewhere else, create a new WHS installation with the system drive mirrored and then put the data back on WHS server. I guess my other option would be to create a new mirrored drive and duplicate the WHS system drive to it. Not sure if this will put the WHS file system out of whack, but my guess is that it might.

    Saturday, August 30, 2008 9:25 PM
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     B Dyer wrote:

    Thanks, it seems like I may be out of luck. I can't risk my existing WHS installation, it has over a terabyte of data stored on it. I guess my only choice is to back that data up somewhere else, create a new WHS installation with the system drive mirrored and then put the data back on WHS server. I guess my other option would be to create a new mirrored drive and duplicate the WHS system drive to it. Not sure if this will put the WHS file system out of whack, but my guess is that it might.



    I think you need to do more research on the subject.  Intel's Matrix Raid supports migrations from raid ready systems to 2 drive raid 1.

    The manual is here

    My motherboard (Asus P5Q-EM) has a bios flag to set the system to RAID.  This requires separate drivers when you install WHS.

    While you could try creating a mirrored drive and duplicating your current WHS onto it, you would need to manually install the RAID drivers into your WHS install prior to booting it.

    Sunday, August 31, 2008 5:36 AM
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    So if you do not do RAID 1 what are folks doing to try and protect the system drive?  Image System disk, backup?

    Thanks,
    BC
    Tuesday, November 4, 2008 6:37 AM
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    bcnshan said:

    So if you do not do RAID 1 what are folks doing to try and protect the system drive?  Image System disk, backup?

    Mostly nothing. If your system drive fails, you replace it. Then you perform a server reinstallation; this will take some time as your server reindexes all the files in the shares and rebuilds the "tombstones" on the D: partition. If you're using WHS as intended (i.e. haven't loaded it down with a lot of extra software installed via the desktop) the reconfiguration consists of reinstalling addins, recreating users, and rejoining PCs. You won't lose files unless you didn't have duplication on for one or more shares and files in those shares were really on the D: partition. You might lose your backup database, if any components were stored on the system drive (the backup database isn't duplicated unless you've used an unsupported tool or hack to enable it).

    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Tuesday, November 4, 2008 4:08 PM
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    Ken Warren said:

    bcnshan said:

    So if you do not do RAID 1 what are folks doing to try and protect the system drive?  Image System disk, backup?

    Mostly nothing. If your system drive fails, you replace it. Then you perform a server reinstallation; this will take some time as your server reindexes all the files in the shares and rebuilds the "tombstones" on the D: partition. If you're using WHS as intended (i.e. haven't loaded it down with a lot of extra software installed via the desktop) the reconfiguration consists of reinstalling addins, recreating users, and rejoining PCs. You won't lose files unless you didn't have duplication on for one or more shares and files in those shares were really on the D: partition. You might lose your backup database, if any components were stored on the system drive (the backup database isn't duplicated unless you've used an unsupported tool or hack to enable it).

    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)

    Hi Ken,

    Basically I'm a RAID guy and I'm planning to setup my first WHS at home (in 2 weeks time). My intel motherboard allows me to put 6 SATA drive and 1 IDE drive. For phase 1, my plan will be to setup a 3 1TB SATA drive configured as a RAID 5 array. The remaining 3 SATA port will be for future storage upgrade (phase 2). Then, for the single IDE port, based on your previous 'sweet spot' theory, I'm planning to put in a 160GB IDE drive for it and set it as the first drive in my system (the RAID 5 array will be 2nd drive). WHS will be installed on the IDE drive, with RAID 5 array as the storage drive. I will put all my archive into this array. With RAID 5, at least I'm covered (with the expense of 1 drive failure). Any comments on my setup?

    About the WHS installed on the IDE drive, I assumed the IDE drive will become my system drive, right? What would be the probable scenario if this IDE drive fail? What would be the consequences, as far as my storage archive on the RAID 5 array is concern? I read about backing up WHS system drive for recovery purpose. What is it all about? Does it help if my IDE drive fail? Where does this backup goes to? I only got 1 IDE and 1 RAID array. Is the backup going to resides in the RAID array or external storage or connected home PC?

    Please advise.

    Thanks,
    Felix



    Tuesday, November 25, 2008 4:46 PM
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    I would suggest installing WHS on a drive on one of your SATA ports & forgoe the IDE drive.  In addition you may want to use a larger installation drive than 160gb.  For various reasons my system drive has data on it (some duplication, some backups, etc...) and if my drive were only 160gb I would have trouble copying data to WHS from Vista.  (Vista queries drive size & WHS returns the D: shares size not the entire available space in your WHS).

    If you plan on re-using an older drive for your system drive (the reason for 160gb IDE drive) you may want to reconsider and buy a new non-oem drive for your system drive.

    My current setup is using an Intel motherboard setup as RAID.  Even though my system drive is not a RAID array I still needed to supply the Intel storage drivers when installing WHS.  In the six sata ports on my motherboard I have one used as system drive, four used as RAID5 array & one as an addition non RAID disk.

    The biggest issue I had with the Intel motherboard is that when you go to 'change' the RAID array it unmounts any non system, non RAID array drives attached to the sata ports.  I went to open the UI for modifiying a RAID array and it did this with no warning.

    Tuesday, November 25, 2008 6:12 PM
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    Hi,

    I'm kinda confuse here. You are saying when I use a connected PC (either Vista or WinXP) to browse the share space, WHS will only report the data available on the system drive? Then what's the use of all the storage drive in WHS? How to make WHS to report all the space available? I'm not using any duplication system on WHS coz I got RAID 5 to covers me (as far as data integrity is).

    If I understand correctly from Ken's description, system drive is acting like a cache drive between incoming/outgoing data transfer and the internal data storage in WHS. Am I missing something? I have another question here too. When incoming data transfer comes into WHS, how does WHS know whether to store it in the system drive or data drive?

    Thanks!
    Wednesday, November 26, 2008 2:32 AM
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    Is there anyone going to help me with my problems?
    Saturday, November 29, 2008 5:15 PM
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    Hi,

    Firstly, you need to read through the available documentation which is available here, or here.  But essentially, the free space on the D: partition of Drive 0 is the 'landing stage' from where WHS moves it to it's final resting place, dependant on how you have set your system. For example, copying music files to the Music Shared Folder with Duplication enabled, would end up with two copies of your transferred music - one copy on each of two physical drives with just the tombstone remaining which points to the final locations. Therefore the actual location could be anywhere, but as far as the user is concerned, they just see the added files in their Shared Folder-Music.

    Colin

    ps It's better if, when you have a question, you start a new thread; poarticularly if, like this one, it's already been marked as 'answered' as the majority of people will step past 'answered' threads.

    If anyone answers your query successfully, please mark it as 'Helpful', to guide other users.
    • Proposed as answer by FelixC1 Saturday, November 29, 2008 5:51 PM
    Saturday, November 29, 2008 5:34 PM
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