RAID on Win 10?

[TechLady]

Client wants his Win 10 desktop to be RAID1 for mirroring using two SSDs. Home user, but a paranoid one, and this would be for the OS drive. My question is, is this even advisable and are there any pitfalls I should be aware of?

 

[Mick]

Chances are - if it's a home user - it doesn't have a RAID controller, so you'd either have to sort that out or you could use software RAID - but not ideal. If it's data security he's after, I'd probably suggest a cloud system as an alternative on cost grounds and see how that goes down.

Edit: I should have added that although I have done software RAID in Win 7, it was/is a 'Pro-only' feature. I don't know if that's the case for Win 10 because I've never done one.

 

[Moltuae]

Sounds like he/she is under the impression that RAID1=backup, which of course it ain't. The only real advantage of RAID1 in a desktop PC would be to minimise downtime in the event of a drive failure. And since we're not talking about a server with 'real' RAID and hot-swappable drives, the amount of time saved vs restoring from a full system backup would be minimal since it would still be necessary to shut the PC down and swap-out the failed drive. IMO a better solution would be full system backup images, scheduled to save to a secondary internal drive (in addition to the usual external/off-site backups of course).

 

[Porthos]

IMO a better solution would be full system backup images, scheduled to save to a secondary internal drive (in addition to the usual external/off-site backups of course).

Agreed.

 

[Metanis]

It would appear that Windows 10 raid controllers for residential products are not a hot commodity right now. You'd have some research ahead of you.

 

[TechLady]

Agreed.

Yes. Ok, software that could do this? I dunno...I don’t see SSDs fail that often to begin with.

 

[nlinecomputers]

https://www.google.com/search?q=how...j0j7&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

Though I agree with the others. They need a backup not a raid. Or if you insist on a raid you still need a backup. Raid doesn’t help with a fire or spilling a cup of coffee on the PC, or ransomware, etc.

 

[Porthos]

Yes. Ok, software that could do this? I dunno...I don’t see SSDs fail that often to begin with.

Macrium Reflect. There is also a Black Friday discount on the paid version(not needed for most) currently.
Macrium paid has ransomware protection built-in.https://www.macrium.com/mig

 

[Sky-Knight]

Raid 1 on Win10 Pro just let the OS do it. If you're going to mirror stuff, take the performance hit and let the OS do it.

Why? Because it's easier to fix... the drives are always readable by another platform, heck the mirror itself is now hardware agnostic. You did say he was paranoid right? If you take this road, just make sure the user understands that in the event of a drive failure, his machine probably isn't going to boot. Why? Because the main board is probably going to pitch a fit, and even if you have both disks in the boot order, the dead disk is still likely to cause headaches until it's disconnected. Cheap RAID controllers have the SAME limitations... so why pay for one?

But, if I could talk the client into accepting reason, I'd skip the mirror entirely and get an image based backup as has been suggested here. Not only does that backup protect against disk failure, but also provides protection from a horde of other threats too. It's simply money better spent.

 

[HCHTech]

Windows 10 Pro (at least) still has the "create mirrored volume" and "create striped volume" choices in disk manager, if that's what you are talking about. If, after explaining RAID vs. Backup they still want a RAID, then I would do it at the BIOS level, not from within Windows. Many motherboards support this. That way, Windows neither knows nor cares that the volume it sees during installation happens to be a RAID.

Edit: I did a RAID0 like this last year for a gaming build. Twice the risk of drive failure, but man it was fast. Clearly this is filed under "more money than sense", but who am I to judge.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Spindles had higher rates of failure....so RAID was smart for ultra important computers that needed uptime (like servers)

SSDs are reliable, and should outlive the life of the computer. MUCH less of a need for RAID.

To me, the reasons to have a RAID controller are things that REAL RAID controllers have..dedicated processor, battery backed cache, features like online expansion, etc. RAID controllers that do this typically have a comma in their price tag, and aren't available for residential/desktop class computers. Yeah you see motherboards or computers that support RAID...but those are what I call "fake RAID"...it's a cheesy support that is still CPU robbing and limited in features.

I know a lot of people shrug away from OS based RAID...but really it is decent, not much of a performance hit. For a home user I'd do OS RAID. Since the so called hardware options to do RAID really aren't much better, if better at all. Windows RAID is easy to repair if it breaks...I actually find it easier than those el crappo built in fake-raids.

But again..for a residential user, with SSDs...I'd just pass on RAID and focus on backing up data. Heck with Windows 10 installing so quickly, and installing software also goes quick on todays systems, even basic stuff like having OneDrive makes rebuilding a computer and putting your data back very quick and easy. Heck probably quicker than trying to repair a broken fake RAID setup!

 

[TechLady]

Yeah...he actually has cloud backup (reminds me, I need to check if he's kept paying...), I think he just wants to stay up and running instantly if anything happens to the OS. But again, I haven't seen SSDs fail very often. Also, he's not really running anything that I or anyone would consider super mission-critical...he's retired. I'm leaning towards just showing him how to do images himself if the consensus is that I probably shouldn't bother with RAID.

 

[Porthos]

I'm leaning towards just showing him how to do images himself

Good luck with that. I have many who do them like clockwork but also a good many who even though I have walked them thru it and sold them the external seem to never do it "since the last time I showed them"

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I think he just wants to stay up and running instantly if anything happens to the OS.

Don't forget...if anything happens to the OS...RAID won't save you. With RAID 1, if the OS corrupts...it's just copying twice that it corrupts...once on both sides of the mirror. RAID won't prevent that...what gets written to RAID, gets saved by RAID, even if its bad.
RAID is there to help prevent downtime in case of hard drive failure. If a drive starts throwing SMART errors, or if a drive totally fails...the RAID 1 mirror breaks and the still remaining healthy drive just keeps plugging along. The OS won't know or see a difference, it's just that hardware redundancy of drives is gone now. And hopefully alerts happen and someone notices the alerts and replaces the failed drive before the still healthy drive fails!

 

[Moltuae]

I think he just wants to stay up and running instantly if anything happens to the OS. But again, I haven't seen SSDs fail very often. Also, he's not really running anything that I or anyone would consider super mission-critical...he's retired. I'm leaning towards just showing him how to do images himself if the consensus is that I probably shouldn't bother with RAID.

I would advise him to use the money he was going to spend on a second SSD to buy a good (internal) backup HDD instead. Install Reflect and create a regular 'full' backup schedule (eg weekly), then schedule 'incremental' backups in-between at whatever frequency he requires (incremental backups will typically only take a minute or two to run if scheduled to run often).

Install Reflect's 'Rescue' boot menu environment and show him how easily he can select Reflect at boot-up, choose a backup and roll the entire system back. You can even do this from within Windows (assuming Windows is bootable), which enables you to remotely-assist the roll-back if necessary. You simply select the system backup you wish to restore to and the system will reboot into the Reflect Rescue environment, where it will automagically restore the system from backup then reboot back into Windows when restoration is complete.

He still of course needs some form of external or cloud backup. For removable external HDD backups, you can define a (non-scheduled) backup in Reflect and create a desktop shortcut to it (there's a Reflect feature that will create the shortcut for you).

 

[Markverhyden]

I think the best way to handle this is to build several different options and discuss with the customer. Personally I've had good success using OS software RAID but that only been in Server '08 and mdadm for *nix and Apple.

First, and major part, would be to have the customer define what is acceptable and not acceptable in terms of downtime. Build the solution options based on that discussion. Either way all the comments above about backups are spot on. No RAID is intended to provide backup. Just continuity of operation until the drive failure(s) are addressed.

Is the workstation hooked up to a known good UPS which can sustain a power loss for at least 20 minutes or so? Gives the customer time to gracefully shutdown the workstation. A sudden power loss might result in corruption if using software RAID or one of those OS based RAID cards. A real raid card, with cache battery backup, should not have near as much risk in a situation like that.

 

[Markverhyden]

I'm leaning towards just showing him how to do images himself if the consensus is that I probably shouldn't bother with RAID.

People, generally speaking, never remember a task that is not repeated often.

 

[Sky-Knight]

People, generally speaking, never remember a task that is not repeated often.

And why should they? Automate or go home, isn't that the entire purpose of our industry?

 

[nlinecomputers]

And why should they? Automate or go home, isn't that the entire purpose of our industry?

Which is why cloud backups are the best. Give end users a set of external backup disks and they’ll forget to change them out even if the software runs everyday. One good power surge or ransomware attack and its all gone.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@nlinecomputers Cloud is certainly a better option, but... they aren't a panacea. The user has to actually pay for it, and remember their login. Sitting on the phone with Carbonite support for hours to get into an account based on CC details because the user no longer has the email in question anymore isn't very fun.

And then three's the restore time... yuck. But, you get what you pay for, and residential solutions are all but universally crap because cheap.