Enter The Matrix: Slice out and get the best part from your hard drives

fritzman · Aug 12, 2007

Nice reusts mate.

Two questions... What Operating system are you using?
Have you enabled Write Back (pretty sure you have looking at the scores) for that Raid0 drive?

JDany3D · Aug 12, 2007

fritzman said:
Nice reusts mate.

Two questions... What Operating system are you using?
Have you enabled Write Back (pretty sure you have looking at the scores) for that Raid0 drive?

Hi fritzman,

i'm using Win XP Pro 32 bit at the moment but i'll try Win XP Pro 64 in the near future and Vista 32/64 later.
Yes, write back cache is enabled for both volumes.

I'm actually spending my time in creating a boot CD (with Bart PeBuilder) including some plugins, first of all DriveimageXML in order to test a disaster recovery before it really happens...

As advised in this forum by someone else, it's useful to try it now, at early time than after a complex configuration has been done.
I love this forum! :beer:

Some questions:
Did anyone try to install a multi-boot configuration (like WinXP 32 + Win XP 64 + Vista XX)? Any advice about it?
...and linux on Matrix raid?!

Thanks
Bye dudes.
JDany3D

dethzero · Aug 12, 2007

fritzman said:
Yep to both.

I have never used Raptors, but logic would say they will be quick.

Simple enough to test out... take some backups and have a go.

Most use Raid 1 or 5 for the balance, simply because of the redundancy.

If you're not concerned about that... set them up however you like. (From memory, you can only have 2 partitions total though.)

Cool, so that settles it. Once the q6600 arrives and other stuff, I'll have to set that matrix thingiemajiggie up =]

I've had this raid 0 setup for over two years now and no data loss or harddrive failure. And I'm not worried much about data loss either hehe. I have a habit of not to store anything important on computers =]

fritzman · Aug 12, 2007

JDany3D said:
Hi fritzman,

i'm using Win XP Pro 32 bit at the moment but i'll try Win XP Pro 64 in the near future and Vista 32/64 later.
Yes, write back cache is enabled for both volumes.

I'm actually spending my time in creating a boot CD (with Bart PeBuilder) including some plugins, first of all DriveimageXML in order to test a disaster recovery before it really happens...
As advised in this forum by someone else, it's useful to try it now, at early time than after a complex configuration has been done.
I love this forum!

Some questions:
Did anyone try to install a multi-boot configuration (like WinXP 32 + Win XP 64 + Vista XX)? Any advice about it?
...and linux on Matrix raid?!

Thanks
Bye dudes.
JDany3D

Cool mate

I thought you would have enabled it.

BartPE is a fantastic tool... I tend to use it or Acronis, depending on which the particular PC I am on at the time prefers.

Re multi-boot... often thought about it, but never actually got to do it. I have well migrated to Vista now, so now going back for me.

I am sure others will assist though.

bing · Aug 12, 2007

JDany3D,

That is great performance you got there, and it sounds like you're having a great fun on the "smoothness" as fritzman said ! LOL :beer:

Nice to hear you're sharpening your kung-fu on disaster recovery, especially when there is no important stuff in there yet, just try trashing one of the drive and rebuilt !

Since you're buidling the BartPE disc, don't forget to update the Intel Matrix Storage driver, they just released the latest version recently, check my post here.

JDany3D said:
Some questions:
Did anyone try to install a multi-boot configuration (like WinXP 32 + Win XP 64 + Vista XX)? Any advice about it?

...and linux on Matrix raid?!

About multi boot, I'm afraid I can't help you too much, I'm using XP only rig.
Try search or ask in the Windows OS section, I'm sure many will help you.

About linux, bad news, Matrix Raid or Intel ICHxR Raid hates Linux ! :eh?:

Nothing technical though, its just Intel decided to drop the support for Linux driver since ICH5R generation !

JDany3D · Aug 13, 2007

bing said:
JDany3D,

That is great performance you got there, and it sounds like you're having a great fun on the "smoothness" as fritzman said ! LOL

Nice to hear you're sharpening your kung-fu on disaster recovery, especially when there is no important stuff in there yet, just try trashing one of the drive and rebuilt !

Since you're buidling the BartPE disc, don't forget to update the Intel Matrix Storage driver, they just released the latest version recently, check my post here.

hahah, yes, i hope i will enjoy these drives.
Ok, i'll do that but.....how to trash only one drive?
I could disconnect it, then delete the volume raid 0 in the matrix bios,
reconnect it and create again the raid 0.

At that point....i have question: what's happened to the MBR and partition table?

Both should be normally present at the head 0, sector 1 of the raid 0 volume, right?
Do you know whether DriveimageXML takes a backup of partition table or not?
The problem could arise when partition table does not exist anymore and Driveimage backup doesn't have a copy of that.
If i have only one partition on the raid 0 volume won't be any trouble but if i have more than one partition (in the worse case, primary and extended) could be hard to remember (and reconstruct) the exact configuration. :bang head

Guys, what do you think about that? Am I right?
How did you solve this case?

bing said:
About linux, bad news, Matrix Raid or Intel ICHxR Raid hates Linux !
Nothing technical though, its just Intel decided to drop the support for Linux driver since ICH5R generation !

What a pity.

I think Linux would fly on a raid system.
I hope some expert linux programmer will think about that.
For now, i'll try to be satisfied by a Linux image running in into WMWare player on top of windows. :-/

Bye
JDany3D

bing · Aug 13, 2007

Additional steps in recovering Matrix Raid boot volume using DriveImageXML

JDany3D said:
Ok, i'll do that but.....how to trash only one drive?

Bring one of the drive to other computer and reformat and repartition it, it will destroy the raid metadata (configuration) in that drive.

JDany3D said:
I could disconnect it, then delete the volume raid 0 in the matrix bios,
reconnect it and create again the raid 0.

No, never delete anything at the BIOS level, it will destroy all the raid configuration in those drives array.

Remember, the simulation is only for single drive failure !

How did I know that ? I had migrated matrix raid drives from ICH7R mobo to ICH8R and other users as well from to different mobo.

That is the proof that the raid configuration is stored in those drives, not in the mobo or bios.

By knowing this, I quite confident, let say if the mobo is broken/died, all you need is just find any mobo even different brand as long it has same ICHxR chip, hook those drives, and with BartPE CD we can retrieve all those important stuffs in raid 1, 5 or 10 volume.

JDany3D said:
At that point....i have question: what's happened to the MBR and partition table?

Both should be normally present at the head 0, sector 1 of the raid 0 volume, right?

Yeah, if its on normal non raided single drive, but once raided, I'm not sure where it puts those MBR and partition. Maybe it spreads that single crucial sector into those raided drives ? No body knows.

JDany3D said:
Do you know whether DriveimageXML takes a backup of partition table or not?
The problem could arise when partition table does not exist anymore and Driveimage backup doesn't have a copy of that.

Unfortunately no, you will have to recreate the partition, and since you've asked, when booting on BartPE, the tool for creating partition is using the primitive command line DISKPART which is quite a pain to use.

Download this DiskPartitioner (scroll to the last page of that thread to see if there is any new version) and embed it into your BartPE CD, this is very handy tool since it is the GUI version or front end for that windows DISKPART command line tool.

Assuming we're talking about single partition on the Raid 0, then all you need is just allocate the whole drive as the single partition as before when you install the OS on the 1st time.

Now, this is the tricky part, which I've done and tested.

Take a deep breath

and read these following instructions carefully. Actually if you understand the whole process like the reason on every step, you don't need to write it down or memorize it.

These are the steps needed to recover the Raid 0 boot partition using DriveImageXML booted from BartPE CD (again, assuming single boot partition at the Raid 0 volume) :

Hook up the replacement drive.
Fix or re-create the Raid 0 from the Intel BIOS, and don't touch that Raid 1 or 5 or your precious stuff in it will be gone.
Boot from BartPE CD you've created with Intel driver and DiskPartitioner in it.
Launch the DiskPartitioner.
Create the partition on the Raid 0 and don't forget to mark it active.
Restore Raid 0 image and assuming you've saved the drive's image before in the Raid 1/5 volume, and they're still readable even with the un-synched new replacement drive. Or other source like external USB drive if you store it there.
Once you're finished restoring the image, pull the BartPE CD.
Put your Windows OS XP disc in the drive, the one you used to install the OS in the 1st place. If you've slipstreamed this Win XP CD with Intel Matrix driver then proceed to next step. If not, be ready and prepare the Intel Driver floppy disk since you will need it on the next step. Native Windows XP doesn't recognize your ICHxR raid natively. (I dunno about Vista since I never touch it yet)
Re-boot from the Windows OS CD you've inserted
If you don't have a slipstreamed Window XP CD as mentioned, be prepare to hit the F6 key for it to load the Intel Matrix driver from floppy disk.
Once the Windows OS loaded, it will prompts you few options, select the recovery process (press "R") to enter the XP "Recovery Console"

Once "R" pressed, it will prompt you this :

Code:

Microsoft Windows(R) Recovery Console

The Recovery Console provides system repair and recovery functionality. 
Type EXIT to quit the Recovery Console and restart the computer.

1: C:\WINDOWS 

Which Windows Installation would you like to log on to 
(To cancel, press ENTER)?

Assuming you have only one XP installation there, then just select 1 and <enter>
Type in the Administrator password that it prompted, then you've entered the "Recovery Console" mode.
Now type at the prompt >FIXMBR C:
Again at prompt >FIXBOOT C:
To restart the system, type >EXIT and pull the CD from the drive to boot from the hard disk.
Pull the CD in there since you will now boot from the Raid.
Voila, the Raid 0 is now restored.

Phhewww... long and many steps eh ?

That is why many of matrix raid users prefer using commercial software like Acronis since it takes care all of this hassles. Well, that is the price for a freeware like DriveImageXML.

I really can't write a complete guide on this since it might vary at different rig, configuration, personal preference and etc. So it's difficult to write a really concise guide that fits for many users.

That is why I always suggest people to try it out themself and get use to this recovery process when using DriveImageXML.

One important message from me :
"Do NOT trust everything I said here, try it your self !" ..he..he

For example your case, that multiple partitions in the Raid 0 will be a serious problem if you don't keep/save that multiple partition information handy somewhere else when you re-create them like on step no.5 above.

Just curious, why multiple partitions ? Most people here are using single partition and the reason we made the Raid 0 slice as smallest as possible.

Asuming on singe OS, multiple partitions will only slow down the drive performance since the heads need to hop around between those partitions. A single large partition that is consistently well defragmented will beat this multiple partitions strategy.

JDany3D said:
If i have only one partition on the raid 0 volume won't be any trouble but if i have more than one partition (in the worse case, primary and extended) could be hard to remember (and reconstruct) the exact configuration.

Guys, what do you think about that? Am I right?
How did you solve this case?

One idea that I could think of is, try run that diskpartitioner program, take a screen shot since it will shows the partitions detail, and then save & burn it into the BartPE CD ? And you will have another headache too, you need to make that precious BartPE CD at least two copies, just in case your dog etas one of them. LOLOL

Hope this long post helps !

jstutman · Aug 13, 2007

What possibilities would having 2 pairs of identical drives? IE 2 Raptors and then 2 320 Seagates?

fritzman · Aug 13, 2007

jstutman said:
What possibilities would having 2 pairs of identical drives? IE 2 Raptors and then 2 320 Seagates?

Or better yet... 3 x Raptors and 3 x Seagates (or W/D's)

Sounds like a good upgrade.

keninishna · Aug 13, 2007

jstutman said:
What possibilities would having 2 pairs of identical drives? IE 2 Raptors and then 2 320 Seagates?

raptors in a matrix raid apparently have outstanding access times as well as seagates (but not as fast as raptors). This makes the first slice good for a lot of fast random data for example games like oblivion could take use of this as it loads from the hard drive constantly and even for booting into windows 4 seconds flat.

JDany3D · Aug 14, 2007

Hi Bing,

WOW!!!!

Your message is not a simple post: it's a manual!

bing said:
Bring one of the drive to other computer and reformat and repartition it, it will destroy the raid metadata (configuration) in that drive.

No, never delete anything at the BIOS level, it will destroy all the raid configuration in those drives array.
Remember, the simulation is only for single drive failure !

Bing, it's impossible for me attaching the drive on other computer simply because the other two PCs don't have a serial ata controller.

What i could try to do is to connect one of four drives to the second controller on mobo, hoping the first controller will not found it.
At that point i could try to format it.

bing said:
Yeah, if its on normal non raided single drive, but once raided, I'm not sure where it puts those MBR and partition. Maybe it spreads that single crucial sector into those raided drives ? No body knows.

As soon as the raid volume is created, i think windows will see it like a single drive and it will store MBR on exactly the same place as a single HD.
The controller shouldn't know the meaning of data written by operanting system. MBR + partition table fit in a single sector, so the raid controller should save it at the virtual head 0, track 0, sector 1, falling at the very beginning of the first drive of the volume.
I don't think the controller will spread it considering it keeps the space of 1 sector (512 bytes).

bing said:
Unfortunately no, you will have to recreate the partition, and since you've asked, when booting on BartPE, the tool for creating partition is using the primitive command line DISKPART which is quite a pain to use.

IMHO DISKPART is not so bad. I played with it just yesterday adding and deleting partitions. As soon as you understand the concept of selecting an object (disk, partition or volumes) it's not too much complicated. Just a bit longer to complete an operation and not as user friendly as a GUI.

Ok, stated that Driveimage don't save the sector 1, i think the most simple thing to do is to save the first sector (MBR + partition table) as a file and restore it from BartPE just after recreating the volume and just before restoring the content of partition with Driveimage.

At the end what we need to boot fine again from windows is:

1) working MBR
2) partition table
2.2) active partition info
3) Partition image containing
3.1) boot sector
3.2) boot.ini
3.3) ntldr
3.4) all other necessary file for windows

Point 1, 2 and 2.2 are all contained in the first sector of the HD (single or volume raid)
Points from 3 on, are all contained in the C: partition image create by DriveimageXML.
If you open the xml descriptor file of a backup with a text editor you will notice that bootsector is also included as BASE64 encoding, just inside the tags <bootsector></bootsector>.

In that way you don't need rebooting from winxp CD and doing all bunch of stuff you described.
Moreover, this method should work with multiple partition too.

Do you agree with me or did I miss something?

Ok, i found this link in order to understand the extended partition table.
mmm, it's a little bit complex.
As long as an extended partition is defined in the Master Partition Table, the first sector of that partition won't be a boot sector but a Extended Partition Table (EPT).
This EPT have a pointer to the first volume and could have a pointer to a second EPT.
The second EPT have a poiter to the second volume and could have a pointer to another EPT and so on.
In other words it's a chain of linked nodes.
Not so easy to backup but i think it's possible to follow the chain and save data in a file.

Another idea is to script the creation of partitions.
I don't know if diskpart could do that.
If yes, we could prepare a simple scritp creating all partitions we need both primary, extended with logical volumes in one click.
Then, restore all necessary partition/volume images.

3rd idea: ask DriveimageXML developers to include such things in the next version.... :santa:

One drawback of this aproach could arise in the case we sent a damaged disk with RMA but we didn't get the new one yet.
If we can't buy another disk we have to stay with only 3 of 4 drives.
About raid 5, nearly nothing changed.
For the raid 0 volume, we now have 3/4 of the previous capacity available.
So, restoring partition tables from a previously saved one, will not work well because the definition of partitions boundaries could exceed the total space.

bing said:
Download this DiskPartitioner (scroll to the last page of that thread to see if there is any new version) and embed it into your BartPE CD, this is very handy tool since it is the GUI version or front end for that windows DISKPART command line tool.

Fine, i'll check it out. Is there a ready-to-use plugin for PEBuilder?

bing said:
Take a deep breath and read these following instructions carefully. Actually if you understand the whole process like the reason on every step, you don't need to write it down or memorize it.

heheh, I will try....

bing said:
[*]Hook up the replacement drive.

[*]Fix or re-create the Raid 0 from the Intel BIOS, and don't touch that Raid 1 or 5 or your precious stuff in it will be gone.

mmmm, interesting.
Is there a way to "fix" without deleting and recreating the volume from scratch?

bing said:
That is why many of matrix raid users prefer using commercial software like Acronis since it takes care all of this hassles. Well, that is the price for a freeware like DriveImageXML.

Yes, i like very much Acronis but it's an heavy app (49 MB) vs DriveimageXML (2.55 MB)

bing said:
I really can't write a complete guide on this since it might vary at different rig, configuration, personal preference and etc. So it's difficult to write a really concise guide that fits for many users.

You wrote a very useful guide, instead! A least for me! Thanks!!!!

bing said:
That is why I always suggest people to try it out themself and get use to this recovery process when using DriveImageXML.
One important message from me :
"Do NOT trust everything I said here, try it your self !" ..he..he

Will try and report here.... :beer:

bing said:
Just curious, why multiple partitions ? Most people here are using single partition and the reason we made the Raid 0 slice as smallest as possible.

Asuming on singe OS, multiple partitions will only slow down the drive performance since the heads need to hop around between those partitions. A single large partition that is consistently well defragmented will beat this multiple partitions strategy.

hehehe, the assumption is wrong.
I wanna install a working WinXP with all my Graphic/audiovideo apps and keep it clean.
A second WinXP in order to make tests, benchs, try apps, games and so on.
A thirth partition to try Win XP 64 and/or Vista.
A fourth one for linux either installed in it (if i will find drivers for IHC9R) or running into WMWare Player.

I still have a little bit of confusion on how to configure partitions on raid 5 and the last HD Hitachi.
The first 20-30 GB of 500 GB Hitachi will be the capture disk for audio video (Premiere).
It's the only disk having no relations with the S.O. so no "interrupts".
In the 1452 GB raid 5 volume i think i will create a partition for scracth disc (have still to define how big) and another partition for projects data.

bing said:
One idea that I could think of is, try run that diskpartitioner program, take a screen shot since it will shows the partitions detail, and then save & burn it into the BartPE CD ? And you will have another headache too, you need to make that precious BartPE CD at least two copies, just in case your dog etas one of them. LOLOL

hahahah, i will send a 3rd copy to you.....

bing said:
Hope this long post helps !

Sure it helped me a lot.
I try will recovery with your step and mine.

Thanks again.
Bye
JDany3D

fritzman · Aug 14, 2007

Hiya mate

I have occasionally had to reformat a drive, and what I have done will work in your situation (I'll read the rest of the post later, but you're right... bing's post = this whole thread... is a Manual!)

Disconnect every drive, except the one you want to format. Boot the PC to a WinXP CD and proceed as though you are going to install windows, and delete the partition (if one exists still) and then format the drive. Just before it starts installing, switch the PC off.

Reconnect all your drives, and you have what you had before, except one drive is like a new one... single large partition, formatted NTFS.

Hope that is helpful.

bing · Aug 14, 2007

JDany3D,

hmmm... after reading your explanations, no doubt, your skill and experience is far better than mine and it looks like I'm running out of kungfu moves to show you anymore ! ha..ha..

Please share yours or better make another brief guide if they're different from mine, and also your experience here. It will definitely helps others in the future.

Regarding the DiskPartitioner, personally I never use it ! he..he..
I'm an old command line freak from the olde era, its just I put there in the guide to make sure that for those who allergic to "command line" can take it's advantage.

fritzman,

Remember, you also have contributed alot in this "book" !

JDany3D · Aug 14, 2007

fritzman said:
Hiya mate

I have occasionally had to reformat a drive, and what I have done will work in your situation (I'll read the rest of the post later, but you're right... bing's post = this whole thread... is a Manual!)

Disconnect every drive, except the one you want to format. Boot the PC to a WinXP CD and proceed as though you are going to install windows, and delete the partition (if one exists still) and then format the drive. Just before it starts installing, switch the PC off.

Reconnect all your drives, and you have what you had before, except one drive is like a new one... single large partition, formatted NTFS.

Hope that is helpful.

Hello fritzman,

thanks for your simple and good idea! :clap:

I will try that as soon as i find a way to integrate a disk editor in Bart PE (to save/restore MBR and partition tables (primary + extended, if present)).
I wanna follow the whole process of recovery just one time only, two max!
Waiting 5 hours and 40 min to rebuild raid 5 it's a lot of time!

A question: if i stop the rebuilding, let say to reboot the PC, will I be able to continue the process from the point i left it without start rebuilding again from the beginnning? :bang head

Have a nice day.
Bye
JDany3D

OT: i know my english is not so good (not to say poor) so anyone one willing to correct me, will be :welcome:

. Thanks.

JDany3D · Aug 14, 2007

bing said:
JDany3D,

hmmm... after reading your explanations, no doubt, your skill and experience is far better than mine and it looks like I'm running out of kungfu moves to show you anymore ! ha..ha..

Oh no bing!
You and fritzman helped me a lot!
The main difference between what you write and what i write is the manual experience on the field and the evidences it worked!
You thought it, you did it, you wrote it.
I thought it, i wrote it but i still have to try it! hahahah

So, your recovery process worked for you.
Mine changes have to be verified.

bing said:
Please share yours or better make another brief guide if they're different from mine, and also your experience here. It will definitely helps others in the future.

Of course mate, i'll do it AFTER testing the "alternative" guide on my own skin!

bing said:
Regarding the DiskPartitioner, personally I never use it ! he..he..
I'm an old command line freak from the olde era, its just I put there in the guide to make sure that for those who allergic to "command line" can take it's advantage.

haha, ok, maybe i will try it for you sharing my impressions.

bing said:
fritzman,

Remember, you also have contributed alot in this "book" !

That's true bing! fritzman is a very clever man.
hmmmm, i'm starting to think eating fish really gives very interesting results! :bday:

I'll come back as soon as i have any concrete result.
Thanks for your support, guys.
Bye
JDany3D

bing · Aug 14, 2007

JDany3D said:
A question: if i stop the rebuilding, let say to reboot the PC, will I be able to continue the process from the point i left it without start rebuilding again from the beginnning?

I think you can, not sure on Raid 5, but on my Raid 1, I could stop it, turn off the PC, turned on again and then on the matrix console do the rebuilding process and it was resuming where it stopped at the last time.

fritzman · Aug 14, 2007

bing said:
I think you can, not sure on Raid 5, but on my Raid 1, I could stop it, turn off the PC, turned on again and then on the matrix console do the rebuilding process and it was resuming where it stopped at the last time.

Yep... Raid5 does the same.

JDany3D · Aug 16, 2007

bing said:
I think you can, not sure on Raid 5, but on my Raid 1, I could stop it, turn off the PC, turned on again and then on the matrix console do the rebuilding process and it was resuming where it stopped at the last time.

fritzman said:
Yep... Raid5 does the same.

First of all: thanks men!

I'm still thinking how to reach maximum reliability without sacrifice too much the performances.

The goals i would like to reach are (ordered by importance) :attn:

:
1) Reliability in case of disk failure (i should still be able to work back in 15 minutes)
2) Speed on critical audio/video data and virtual O.S. images
3) Not too much trouble reconfiguring the system (in case of drive failure)

About 1st point, i think i'll have some issues to deal with when an Hd fails and thus the raid 0 fails.

Imagine it for a while:
- you have O.S. on raid 0 and others stuffs on raid 5
- one raid HD has gone.
- you returned it back to your shop and you will get it back not before than 20-30 days (it's a realistic time, considering shipping forth and back and repairing time).
- you have to work and you can't wait so long time.

So, what can we do now?

If you try to delete the raid 0 from raid controller bios in order to rebuild it on the remaining 3 drives, you'll be sticking at the WARNING message from the bios informing you that you'll loose the whole raid 5 too!!! I has been really disappointed about that! :-/

A possible solution would be buying another drive of same capacity in the while and rebuild all (as you already done simulating it by formatting one of drives).
But this solution costs too much i think. Don't you?
It's like having a spare disk (not utilized for most time).
Summing it up: if i have o.s. on raid 0 and one HD fails, i won't be able to work as long as i don't replace the drive.

Another possible configuration is: everything on raid 5.
Very simple, no trouble at all, nothing to restore, no BartPe CD to boot from.
Just works fine and when you get back your drive, just connect it (and maybe do something in the bios to let it happily join the raid).
Well, of course there is a drawback: reduced raid 5 speed and access time compared to raid 0. More or less 3/4 (or less) of total raid 0 performance.
It could be still acceptable for the sake of simplicity.

Another way to go would be: S.O. and important stuff on raid 5 and scratch disk/temp on raid 0.
The only difference of this solution compared to the previous one is that you have to reconfigure some applications in order to redirect pointers to scratch/temp disk to a temporally created directories on raid 5 in the case of drive failure.
Following this way, we have max speed for audiovideo editing, not too much trouble for reconfiguring but still a reduced speed for O.S.
Could be the way to go but maybe not yet the best one.

So, how to get max speed on both O.S. and scratch disk, letting me still work in the case of a single drive failure?
hmmm, maybe there is a possible way to go:
O.S, temp and scratch disk on raid 0, important stuffs on raid 5 with a dedicated recovery primary partition (on raid 5) of the same size of the OS partition located on raid 0 volume.
Ok, let's see how it could be working.
As far as all drives are up and running i'll be working at the maximum speed on what i need.
I copied the image of my (raid 0) OS onto the recovery partition on raid 5.
As soon as a drive fails (and so the raid 0), the previous C: drive on raid 0 will become automatically C: drive on raid 5.

In that way i'll still be able to boot from the recovery partition containing all i need (OS and apps).

Of course I have to reconfigure scratch and temps, like it happens in the second solution.
I do not have to boot from BartPE CD and i will be able to restore the raid 0 data directly from raid 5 OS as soon as the repaired drive will come back to me.
So, instead having a spare drive, i just have a spare boot partition on raid 5, just in case of emergency.

Ok, what would happen if i had multi boot OSs?
hmmm, this is a little bit more complex because when raid 0 is running with 2 or 3 active partitions, first drive letters are automatically assigned to them and during installation of 2nd and 3rd OSs, the whole registry configuration will point to those drive letters (for example C:, E:, F: )
I won't be able to replicate, for example, the 2nd OS (contained in the 2nd partition of raid 0 disk, drive E: ) onto the 1st partition (the recovery one, drive C: ).
Indeed, windows still boots (i tested it) but registry would be messed up pointing a non existent E: drive.
I think there are two mutually exclusive ways i can follow.
The first one is replicating every active partition contained on raid 0 onto the raid 5, of course sacrificing more space but having full functionality.
The second one is sacrifice 2nd and 3rd OS (i won't be able to use them), without replicating them on raid 5 and thus without having 20 + 20 GB death space on raid 5 waiting a drive failure.

I'm just testing that last raid configuration and it seams to work!

The controller is in degraded raid 5 state and it booted from C: first partition on it.
I'll report you all needed steps to configure it as soon as i'll finish all the tests.

Well, what do you think about it?
Any other suggestions or comments will be :welcome:

, as usual...

Bye
JDany3D

fritzman · Aug 16, 2007

I think that's a great idea, but I would probably grab a cheap 40 or 60 Gb drive, and clone my C drive onto it then disconnect it from the motherboard, so at any time you can delete your Raid0 partition (for this reason, I have ALL my Documents on my Raid5 partition, including my Outlook.pst & archive.pst files), plug in the dormant single C drive, and boot up your machine with the Raid5 still intact and everything doing all the right things.

I suspect that with the aid of a disk-partitioning program, you could easily do what you suggest, and create another small boot partition (say a Raid1 or Raid5 one) straight after the Raid0 partition and run a 'dual-boot' system, or inactivate the unneeded 2nd boot partition until it was required.

I am just in the throes of setting up a dual-boot system now that I have taken my Matrix system apart and gone back to single drives (until 500Gb 32Mbcache 7200.11 drives are available here). I thought I would use Raid0 for the first one (Vista64-bit) and Raid5 for the 2nd.

I would like to (hopefully) use exactly the same Vista64-bit on that one as well, but as an actual 2nd install, so I could boot to either. Don't know whether or not it's possible or not, but worth having a go at. The 2nd install might bork at having the 1st one with the same unlock key, but worth a try.

Very interested to see your results though.

JDany3D · Aug 16, 2007

Hi Fritzman,

fritzman said:
I think that's a great idea, but I would probably grab a cheap 40 or 60 Gb drive, and clone my C drive onto it then disconnect it from the motherboard, so at any time you can delete your Raid0 partition (for this reason, I have ALL my Documents on my Raid5 partition, including my Outlook.pst & archive.pst files), plug in the dormant single C drive, and boot up your machine with the Raid5 still intact and everything doing all the right things.

well, sure it should be possible but i can't find any benefit from it vs. creating a recovery partition on raid 5.
You have to spend extra bucks for another drive and a single drive will not have the high speed of combined 3 HD in raid 5 volume.
I tried to delete only the raid 0 from the bios but i got the warning all the data on all volumes will be erased and all disks will be markead as NON-raid.
It seems that deleting the raid 0 will delete the raid 5 too.
Are you sure you can delete only the raid 0??!

fritzman said:
I suspect that with the aid of a disk-partitioning program, you could easily do what you suggest, and create another small boot partition (say a Raid1 or Raid5 one) straight after the Raid0 partition and run a 'dual-boot' system, or inactivate the unneeded 2nd boot partition until it was required.
..
..
Very interested to see your results though.

I have done it already (a primary active partition on raid 5 with the image of OS on raid 0) and it is working although during boot process one of drivers wait a lot, probably looking for the missing drive.
I have to investigate on it later.
Once started, the emergency partition works well as his twin brother on raid 0.
So I can say that the first part of the experiment ended successfully.

bing said:
Yeah, if its on normal non raided single drive, but once raided, I'm not sure where it puts those MBR and partition. Maybe it spreads that single crucial sector into those raided drives ? No body knows.

Bing, i have done some experiment and found something interesting...

I disconnected the first drive of the raid system (simulating a drive failure) and connected it to the second controller on mobo.
Well, the 1st controller didn't found it as expected and the second one found it as normal HDD.
OK, once in windows (booting from the emergency partition on raid 5), i analyzed the content of hd sectors and found that the MBR is where it should be, on the first sector.
About where raid controller write his configuration, googling by "raid signature" i got this link giving me the idea to look at the end of physical disk.

That's what i found (2 sectors):
Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

7470C05A00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 01 E0 01 ..............à.
7470C05A10 00 E0 01 00 00 01 00 00 04 01 FF 01 00 00 00 00 .à........ÿ.....
7470C05A20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05A30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 ................
7470C05A40 02 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 52 41 49 44 35 00 00 00 ........RAID5...
7470C05A50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 60 06 A9 00 00 00 00 .........`.©....
7470C05A60 0C 10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 01 01 00 00 ................
7470C05A70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05A80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05A90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 76 57 38 00 00 00 00 00 ........vW8.....
7470C05AA0 00 00 00 FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ...ÿ............
7470C05AB0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 10 E0 01 08 77 57 38 ..........à..wW8
7470C05AC0 76 57 38 00 00 01 00 05 04 01 FF 01 00 00 00 00 vW8.......ÿ.....
7470C05AD0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05AE0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 ................
7470C05AF0 02 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05B00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05B10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05B20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05B30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05B40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05B50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05B60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05B70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05B80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05B90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05BA0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05BB0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05BC0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05BD0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05BE0 00 20 05 82 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 . .‚............
7470C05BF0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05C00 49 6E 74 65 6C 20 52 61 69 64 20 49 53 4D 20 43 Intel Raid ISM C
7470C05C10 66 67 20 53 69 67 2E 20 31 2E 32 2E 30 32 00 00 fg Sig. 1.2.02..
7470C05C20 CB 19 D2 29 F8 02 00 00 BB 9E 10 E6 E4 0B 00 00 Ë.Ò)ø...»ž.æä...
7470C05C30 F0 0F 00 00 00 00 00 80 04 02 02 00 00 00 00 00 ð......€........
7470C05C40 BB 9E 10 E6 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 »ž.æ............
7470C05C50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05C60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05C70 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05C80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05C90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05CA0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05CB0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05CC0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05CD0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 57 44 2D 57 43 41 50 57 ........WD-WCAPW
7470C05CE0 32 35 35 32 31 35 30 00 30 60 38 3A 00 00 00 00 2552150.0`8:....
7470C05CF0 3A 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 :...............
7470C05D00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 57 44 2D 57 43 41 50 57 ........WD-WCAPW
7470C05D10 32 33 38 32 32 31 39 00 30 60 38 3A 00 00 01 00 2382219.0`8:....
7470C05D20 3A 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 :...............
7470C05D30 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 57 44 2D 57 43 41 50 57 ........WD-WCAPW
7470C05D40 32 36 32 32 35 35 31 00 30 60 38 3A 00 00 02 00 2622551.0`8:....
7470C05D50 3A 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 :...............
7470C05D60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 57 44 2D 57 43 41 50 57 ........WD-WCAPW
7470C05D70 32 35 35 32 39 30 35 00 30 60 38 3A 00 00 03 00 2552905.0`8:....
7470C05D80 3A 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 :...............
7470C05D90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 52 41 49 44 30 00 00 00 ........RAID0...
7470C05DA0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 80 07 00 00 00 00 ..........€.....
7470C05DB0 0C 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 01 00 00 ................
7470C05DC0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05DD0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05DE0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
7470C05DF0 00 00 00 FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ...ÿ............

The number (in red) "00 60 06 A9" located at 7470C05A58 seems to be number of sectors contained in the raid 5.
In decimal would be 2835767296.
Multiplying it by 512 byte per sector = 1,451,912,855,552 bytes = 1352 GB (just the size of raid 5 volume)

The other one "00 00 80 07" = 125829120 (in decimal) sectors = 60 GB.
That's the size of my raid 0.

The "WD-WCAPW#######" are HDD serial numbers.

Ok, that's all for now.
Next steps will be:
- format the detached drive
- reinsert it in raid controller
- fix it in the bios (i don't know exactly how to do it yet)
- boot from raid 5 first partition.
- replace the MBR + Master Partition Table on raid 0 volume from the saved one (with DD).
- restore the contents of all the partitions
- try to reboot from raid 0 and see what happens!

Say to me "Good luck"!

Bye
JDany3D

Enter The Matrix: Slice out and get the best part from your hard drives

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