Dual-Booting and RAID0

hey Guys,

recently, i've been looking into RAID0. initially i assumed that if RAID0 were implemented in the hardware then it would be invisible to the software, and so i assumed that all software, including the boot-loader, would just see a single HDD.

although, after looking into it. it now seems that this is not the case and using RAID0 can cause problems for the boot-loader. therefore, i was wondering if any of you guys have dealt with the problem and how you overcame it?

i am also interested in what is generally considered the best setup for a RAID0 system? i am currently considering a setup where i have 3 HDD-s the first of which acts as a normal HDD (i.e. no RAID) and is the drive from which i boot OS-s, then having the other 2 HDD setup with RAID0 and using them to store video and games etc.


Regards,

- Threads

Hi Threads, and welcome to AO :)

I would be very careful with RAID0 as it is NOT a RAID array......... the "R" stands for "redundant" and there is no redundancy in RAID0. All it does is string drives together such that they are seen as a single drive.
In the past it was useful for stringing together drives to increase apparently contiguous single storage space, but now that we have affordable terrabyte drives I really wonder?

RAID0 should not affect the bootloader or OS, but if you lose a single drive, you are pretty much screwed, as this is striped across the drives along with the data.

I would suggest that you look at RAID 1+0 and RAID5 as alternative strategies ;)

Remember that the more drives you have, the greater the probability of an individual drive failure:eek:

hi nihil,

thanks for your advice. i understand that with RAID0, drives are striped together, thus if one drive fails all the data on the RAID0 array is corrupted. i have looked at RAID01 and RAID10 as you suggested, which look like really good solutions for servers. although as i'm interested in using RAID0 on my home gaming machine, i'm not too conserned with lose of data. as drive failure is pretty rare, and i keep back-ups and i can re-install my games. i'm not so interested in increasing drive size, my main focus is to increase performance.

you said that RAID0 should not affect the bootloader or OS, which is what i assumed, providing RAID0 is implemented at the hardware layer and setup in the BIOS. but i have read many posts on various disscussion boards, that speak of RAID0 causing problems with LILO and GRUB. i also read a tutorial where a driver had to be installed before the Windows Installer would install Windows on a RAID0 drive. therefore i was just wondering, when you said that "RAID0 should not affect the bootloader or OS", have you experience of this being true or are you simply making the same assumption as i did?

i am very grateful for any help and advice that you can give me.


Regards,

- Threads

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Originally Posted by Threads

hi nihil,

i have read many posts on various disscussion boards, that speak of RAID0 causing problems with LILO and GRUB. i also read a tutorial where a driver had to be installed before the Windows Installer would install Windows on a RAID0 drive.
- Threads

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With Linux: I would backup /boot/grub. leave the file device.map alone for now. Decide whether you want to raid the entire drive or just partitions of your choosing. use mdadmn software raid to setup your raid array. Copy the magic numbers it gives you and place them into mdadm.conf. Next edit both fstab and mtab to point to /dev/mdx where x is the number representing mounted paired drives. Recompile the kernel and it will do the magic for you. It recreated initrd to load your HDD drivers and automatically create the raid. last, use grub root and grub setup to make all your drives bootable.

BTW, Raid 0 is junk. Raid 1+0 since you have a spare drive. mdadm knows how to handle that. Your hardware raid0 in bios is crap. They are kissing Microcrap shlt.

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i'm not so interested in increasing drive size, my main focus is to increase performance.

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In which case you don't want RAID, as it will reduce performance.

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i also read a tutorial where a driver had to be installed before the Windows Installer would install Windows on a RAID0 drive.

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Yes, you are prompted to hit F6 to activate a RAID capable PC. You then insert the CD that came with the motherboard to install the software. The reason is that the MoBo will support non-RAID and RAID but the default is non-RAID. It doesn't matter if it is RAID0, just that it is a RAID array.

A Gaming PC, eh? Your weakest link is your network connection.