new to raid question

Going from non-RAID to RAID can be tricky. The RAID drivers need to be installed before booting or you'll probably get a 7B BSOD. In some systems you can install the RAID drivers while still in a single drive (non-RAID) configuration. In others, you need to install them after the restore (like with UR).

One way to get them installed if they won't install without RAID enabled is to enable the RAID controller with an array, but still boot Windows on the single drive. You can then install the drivers.

Whatever you do, make sure you have current backup image. It may take several tries.

Once setup and working, backing up and restoring is the same as for single drives.

If you have XP you should follow the advice of MudCrab. If you have Win 7 32 or 64 a driver is included in the OS. But afterwards you should update the RAID driver.

Before you start you should format your partitions that they are 4 K aligned. WinXP cannot do. Win 7 can. It is said by Intel that this brings performance gains on RAID. If you use TI2011 it should align at restore automatically. But only 11 not 10. If you have multiboot XP + Win7 (or Vista) you should use Win7/Vista for partition operations.

Update and check your restore CDs. Not all programs could handle RAID. TI2010 can but the versions before had a problem if I remember correctly. The same might be true for other software.

Hi and thanks for your responses!

Only Win7 32bit here (Home pro oem - I build my own)

Ah, yes - drivers (just grabbed them from the site) - I remember playing with AHCI a while back and it's a bit of the same thing, though I remember there was a registry setting that you could change to force it to load AHCI drivers in the OS proper. I do not know if that's the same with RAID.

"format partitions that they are 4k aligned"... hmmm - I was planning on cloning (manual,same size) the spindle - is it possible to do that on the fly with Acronis? or would I need to do the bios thing to put raid on the drives, then manually create each partition.....

LOL - I just took a break and googled for how to, and various folks on ms social technet are saying "no you can't" and "why do you want to go to raid" and "you have to re-install"... etc - I got a good giggle from it all.

But:
No way to force Win7 to load RAID drivers like I did for AHCI, and
No simple explanation as to how to do it.

[another quick check and my guess is that that particular hack for AHCI would not also install raid...]

So maybe that all blows my raid aspirations out the window...

You should just try it. You have your backup, right? You could just revert back if it fails.

Windows can be switched to RAID or non-RAID. I've done both. See this thread for an example. And here's another one.

TI's UR feature can also insert the drivers as part of the restore.

MudCrab wrote:

You should just try it. You have your backup, right? You could just revert back if it fails.

Windows can be switched to RAID or non-RAID. I've done both. See this thread for an example. And here's another one.

TI's UR feature can also insert the drivers as part of the restore.

Yes, thanks!

The 2 things I d/l'ed from gigabyte site were exe's - iata for intel (which won't run until you set bios to raid.) and an exe that expanded for GA.

ICH10R - turning on RAID in the BIOS does indeed cause Win7 to spontaneously install the raid drivers and ask for a reboot. The system still booted though my boot spindle is plugged to the GA controller at the moment so I don't know it it would if plugged to the Intel. I had expected it to ask me to create a raid set (oh, I see looking at the manual at POST I have to press ctrl-I to get into what is effectively MSM). - alternatively, I guess I could install iata (MSM) on Win7 (after setting bios ICH10R to raid), and do it there... or do I need Matrix running on Win7 to do raid on the ICH10R? Probably - else bsod probably Dunno!

Gigabyte SATA controller - the exe expands and running setup looks like it installs GA drivers for RAID to Win7. However, once I set the bios to raid for the GA SATA controller, Win7 wouldn't load. It did, however, want me to create a raid set (which I would then have to use Acronis to clone from my sincle spindle).

So yeah, I'm at the knowledge point where "you should just try it". It's 2 weeks before sufficient funds allow the 2 new drives.

The alternate at the moment is a single Sammy F3 or a Mushkin Callisto SSD.

Thanks much for all the education and info. I'll post back what I wind up doing.

Just set up your RAID area(s) in Intel and start Win 7. There should not be a further problem. Avoid to use the Gigabyte RAID. When you are in Win 7 you can update the Win 7 RAID driver with the latest Intel.

I have a 3 disk RAID 0 (3 x 1 TB Seagate). HD Tune reports about 370 max and about 320 average transfer reading speed. The write speeds are not bad - hard to achieve with an SSD. At a single disk the read and write speed was almost the same. RAID I did not check anymore. Just to give you an idea if you think about an SSD. Sure random access is hard to beat at SSDs. But don't overlook that I have 3 TB and not some GB with high transfer speed.

In respect of data I never had a problem with Intel RAID. But recently one disk got bad sectors and I had to replace it. Then RAID 0 reminds you that it is not a single disk.

John,

Are those the newer 1TB Seagate drives? The speed on these drives is impressive even as a single drive. Mine beats my previous RAID 0 setup (with the older drivers) and the new RAID with two is twice as fast (I haven't tried RAID 0 with three drives).

---

Kris77,

I've always just setup the RAID in the BIOS and left it at that. I never bothered installing the Intel Windows software because I never needed it.

Enabling RAID in the BIOS is enough to get the drivers loaded. Drives can be run single in RAID mode. I've always run it that way because I just have RAID 0 or RAID 0/RAID 1 with two drives and then (usually) several data drives.

MudCrab,

Those are Seagate ST31000528AS - in the meantime pretty cheap. By the way - if you use Intel RAID and want to know information like S.M.A.R.T. data then there is a new free Intel tool.

The average speed is not really correct - I always forget - sorry. I have two RAID areas - this is the average speed of the first area. This is about 1.5 TB. No idea what the average would be for a single 3 TB area.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3044&Dwnl…

Kris77,

If there should be any boot problems read this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

Again, thanks for all the ideas...

Don't need to install MSM on Win7. Thanks!

Don't use GA sata ports for RAID. Yeah, I think I'll use them for my 2 opticals... (I have 6 ICH10R SATA sockets and 2 GA sockets)

Tip on Seagate... Looks like the .12's are good. I guess the .11's with their 3 surfaces were problematic with RAID. So add to my short list.

Short list is the Seagate ST3500418AS and the Samsung HD502HJ - both 500GB, both about $50 at my local Microcenter (which is very good for quick returns), and both, I believe, single platter. Sammy reviews at about 135MB/s with the Sea right behind it.

My current Hitachi HDP725050GLA360 SHOWS ABOUT 70 (All on HD Tune). I didn't realize drives had changed that much...

So it looks like single drive swap would raise me from 70 to 130 or so, and RAID would raise me to 220 or so.(John said 370/320 so that may be much higher)

Oh yeah, I totally forgot, with striping and 2 500's I get 1T.

The "if a disk goes bad" scenario probably means that I learn about incremental backups - I've always used "full". It means keeping very current on backup images. I totally trust Acronis and my 160gb backup spindle would be replaced by the old 500 Hitachi, and later with a 1T in all liklihood. I have always kept documents and mail on a different partition, so if the opsys goes squirrelly(sp) I didn't care. Now I'll probably have to back them up daily. Or put them on a different spindle (thinking out loud here...). Anyway, I've got a couple of weeks yet to sort this out. Thanks again for all your help!!!

:D

Yeah on SSD - if the Sandforce 12xx controller fiasco had been another 6 months behind I might try it, and yeah, it's only the opsys. So that's effectively dropped from my list.

No need to put the opticals on a different controller. Just try them on the Intel. Speeds up the boot a bit if the Gigabyte controller is disabled. If they really need IDE (only some do) then put them on the Gigabyte and switch it to IDE.

If you buy Seagate take the 12. With 11 Seagate had severe problems for a while.

If you really want it fast then use a RAM disk. Often used applications like Firefox I start from a RAM disk. Also all the Internet cache is there. Cannot get faster. Of course the RAM disk should be loaded/saved at OS boot/shutdown and sometimes you might lose the data since the last save if you do not shutdown correctly.

Good luck!!

John Monter wrote:

No need to put the opticals on a different controller. Just try them on the Intel. Speeds up the boot a bit if the Gigabyte controller is disabled. If they really need IDE (only some do) then put them on the Gigabyte and switch it to IDE.

If you buy Seagate take the 12. With 11 Seagate had severe problems for a while.

If you really want it fast then use a RAM disk. Often used applications like Firefox I start from a RAM disk. Also all the Internet cache is there. Cannot get faster. Of course the RAM disk should be loaded/saved at OS boot/shutdown and sometimes you might lose the data since the last save if you do not shutdown correctly.

Good luck!!

Uh, Ramdisk. bsod during shutdown after install, bsod on any attempted boot (can't uninstall under safemode). couple hours shot there...

Got sidetracked (fault of a ramdisk/firefox article somewhere) on "portable firefox" and discovered it was really non compatible in terms of where are the bookmarks backed up, etc... wasted 3 hours there...

Actually it booted pretty quick while using the GA controller. 25 secs or so. No different from when on Ich10R. The main thing to ensure fast boot is to clear CMOS. It also cures wake-from-sleep problems.

yes, the .12 . NOT the .11 .

At the moment I am feeling very KISS (keep it simple silly!)

Kriss77,

I have been using ramdisks for the last 15 years I guess - first with Win95. Never had a bsod. Sure sometimes an "unexpected" restart put me back to the last save. But that was it. Don't give up so quick.

In respect of Firefox you just have to move the profiles folder to where you want it and then do this (not even one minute):

Go to the folder (of course take your user instead of XXXX):

C:\Users\XXXX\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles.ini

And change there:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=Default User (Take your profile name here - often it is just "default")
IsRelative=0
Path=Z:\Firefox\Data\profile (Take your path to the profile here)
Default=1

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

To move the cache too enter about:config in the Firefox address line and search for

browser.cache.disk.parent_directory

If it is there just change the string value to your desired cache directory.

If it is not there enter a new STRING with the PREFERENCE NAME

browser.cache.disk.parent_directory

and as value the path to the new location. I took Z:\FirefoxCache

That is it! At least this was it at my system long time ago.

Sure you could use the portable version too but some things like download managers might have a problem then.

Written from Firefox installed on a RAMdisk ;-)

which opsys are you using, John?

Sometimes Win98 (old notebook) and Win7 64. Mostly Win 7 32 and WinXP. All of them have ramdisks. Never used Vista.

I decided on a Samsung HD-103SJ single drive, (Microcenter sku 751164, $60). It's the F3(not R). 1T

Plugged it in and tested it for a while.

Easy clone under standalone Acronis TI 2010 built with DD11. Used "as is".

HD Tach and HD Tune both show it up around 145MB/s.
Sandra "Overall Score" was 602. Up from 487 with the old Hitachi.
Very pleased!

Thanks all for your thoughts!

John Monter wrote:

Sometimes Win98 (old notebook) and Win7 64. Mostly Win 7 32 and WinXP. All of them have ramdisks. Never used Vista.

What ramdisk are you using with win7 32bit? Thanks. I tried Dataram_RAMDisk_V3.5.130R17.msi

EDIT: Okay, scrap all that - others are having serious probs with that particular one.

Found imdisk.exe command line in bat works fine.
imdisk -a -s 64M -m T: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"
That creates it and formats it. put it in startup.

Now I need to go back and read your stuff on putting FF in there!

Thanks!

The HDs get faster and faster I see. With 3 of your Samsung I could have more than 430 MB/s im my RAID I guess.

In respect of ramdisks I give you an overview. This is my experience on my system. But they all have test versions. All of them can load/save the ramdisk. Just for the understanding: real disks are like harddisks. You can do all the functions you can do on a real HD. Real ramdisks are removable disks and not seen as harddisks. But they are much faster. Also FAT32 might be much faster than NTFS. The cluster size should be set to very small to save space.

Dataram (free): endless time for loading and saving the file for the ramdisk data, slow.

Gilisoft (pay): 1 real ramdisk only with Windows memory, very fast.

Farstone (discontinued, before pay): 1 real ramdisk only with Windows memory, very fast.

VSuite (pay): Several ramdisks at the same time possible. You can use extended memory - memory that Win 7 32 cannot use. You can setup as real disks or as real ramdisks. Even if you use extended memory you can hibernate - the only one with this that I know. It creates its own hibernation file for the extended memory.

RamDiskPlus (pay): Several ramdisks at the same time possible. You can use extended memory. Ramdisks show up as real disks. Real ramdisks do not work at least on my computer. Has severe problems if you use BestCrypt, not with TrueCrypt. Hibernate with extended memory not possible. You will lose the data.

I tested some others. But I forgot. Nothing what I would have liked to use.

Thanks John! In the meantime I was busily working - yours didn't seem to work but it may have just been that my ramdisk size was too small.

See my post 22 below - I found no gain with putting the Profile on the RAMDISK.
So ignore this!

So far I have the following instructions...

Put some of Firefox on ramdisk
FF 3.6.13 (note: I use a 200MB cache)(I normally have 70-100 tabs open and active.)
Win7 32bit home pro

I used Gavotte ramdisk 512MB Fixed.
imdisk will also work if you put a command like "imdisk -a -s 512M -m T: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y" " in start.

I.
d/l Gavotte and expand in place.
http://www.mediafire.com/?4tm9llcmyxa
run ramdisk.exe - it will make like it's installing and give you the WQHL or whatever error.
I used 512MB, Fixed, T: .
This will cause a ramdisk to be created at each boot. Cool.

II.
Shutdown FF.
Go to USERS/username/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/ and COPY the default profile (it will look something like r45egro6.default )
Go to your ramdisk T: and create "Profiles" folder, and PASTE your profile in there.
Set up a shortcut on your desktop that looks like {{ "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p }} without the brackets.
Execute it, select CREATE (to create a profile), type something in profile name and browse to the profile in T: and select it.

Where T: is my ramdisk and J:\ is simply one of my partitions.

(copy and paste these - it looks like there are no spaces but there ARE spaces in there!!!)
BACKUP: xcopy T:\*.* J:\Zramdisk\ /E /C /F /G /H /K /Y /V

RESTORE: xcopy J:\Zramdisk\*.* T:\ /E /C /F /G /H /K /Y /V

So shutdown bat file looks something like
xcopy T:\*.* J:\Zramdisk\ /E /C /F /G /H /K /Y /V
C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 01

create a bat of this and put it in startup: (if you crashed, you simply get your last save.)
xcopy J:\Zramdisk\*.* T:\ /E /C /F /G /H /K /Y /V

I have been backing up cache as well, but that may be detrimental...

This sounds a bit complicated. I did not put "some of Firefox on the ramdisk" - what he writes. I copied the WHOLE Firefox to the ramdisk and made the changes I wrote down. So everything runs from the ramdisk. This speeds up the Firefox start a lot too.

Cache I have 60 MB - that is enough. Enter about:cache in the address line and click on Disk Cache and List Entries. You will be surprised how little is used of all the cached data - look at the counter fetched.

My ramdisk size is 220 MB. But there is other small staff I often call up too on the ramdisk. Or things that have very high disk activity all the time. But sometimes I have additional ramdisks in the GB range when I render video files to them. That goes very fast then.

Let me know if I can help.

"some of FF" meaning profiles and cache. Not putting the stuff in Program files. Not much activity there.

See my post 22 below - I found no gain with putting the Profile on the RAMDISK.
So ignore this!

Yes, Not backing up the cache helps so I changed all my bat files to reflect T:\Profiles\*.*

There are things in profiles.ini up in user/.../.../.../.../Firefox that get changed as a result of going through the starting FF with -p procedure.
Also items in prefs.js in the profile that get changed. By not doing this at first I found that part of the original profile was still being used.

For putting cache to ramdisk:
about:config
add or modify browser.cache.disk.parent_directory string to T:\CACHE or wherever your ramdisk is. doing this takes care of the change in prefs.js .

YES! I would certainly think that any video work would be much faster! Esp with 64bit opsys where you can have lots of memory. I'm limited to 3.5GB useable on 32bit Win7 out of my 4GB.

Changed my cache size to 100MB. Will lower my ramdisk to 256MB I use Cache Status, when it works, to show cache use in the bottom bar.

Caveat: be sure to empty the cache in the profile folder once you have the ramdisk cache working - otherwise you will carry an extra 50mb back and forth that's not being used.

Caveat2: If you don't delete the target save, you will get additive results - bad for things like session manager, so shutdown now looks like

rmdir J:\Zramdisk\ /S /Q
xcopy T:\Profiles\*.* J:\Zramdisk\ /E /C /F /G /H /K /Y /V
C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 01

Just for shutdown/start. I never tried since my ramdisk does it automatically. But perhaps you can use it:

Enter gpedit.msc in "Search programs and files" at the Start Menu. Then select Computer Configuration - > Windows Settings -> Scripts. There you can enter bat files for start or shutdown. So you can forget the line C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 01 and might be able to use the normal Windows procedure. But again - I never used it since the ramdisk software does it here. But should work.

Edited:

Well that was all very interesting.

Ran some tests:
Cache was on ramdisk and cleared for all runs.

To start FF to the point where all tabs were finished loading:
Profile on Ramdisk - 57 secs
Profile on HD up in /users/etc - 57 secs

Timings are plus or minus about 3 seconds
65 active tabs.
FF 3.6.13
List of extensions is below...

So I'm back to running FF as usual on HD, but with cache on ramdisk.
This really simplifies everything!

I see almost no disk activity on C: where FF and the Profile is/are located, when FF starts up.

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