FYI: RAID 1 Conversion

Hi all.

For those that ever contemplate "what do you do when want to convert a
single SATA disc to RAID 1" read on. Its currently a pain.

Basically, the Intel ICH5R drivers and bios should IMHO be up to date - I
use bios F9 (rev 1 board) and the 3.5.? drivers. Note: the supposed RAID
driver on the GB site did not work when I booted into Partition Magic to do
the eventual restore - I had to use the Intel 3.5 version drivers for PM to
see the RAID disc.

I already had the system supposedly 'Raid Ready' by having the single SATA
drive hanging off the controller running in RAID mode - but not in raid mode
since it was only a single drive. The Intel documentation refers to this as
Raid Ready.

When you install the second SATA drive, IAA then offers the option to create
a RAID 0 or 1 config.

Now, since mirroring is a COPY of the data, what would you expect? Shove the
drive in, click some buttons, click Yes to are you sure? Then sit back while
the Intel chip duplicated the disc?

Yes of course that is what SHOULD happen, but its not. The documentation
(What little there is) currently implies that you can do this with RAID 0 at
run time. Yes - Raid 0!!!! (I don't know if this works - please have a
backup if you try it and report back), but doesn't say squat about RAID 1.
If you try to do this via IAA it says twice loudly that you are going to
lose all data.

Basically the method is as bad is it gets: Backup everything, set a RAID 1
config via BIOS - disc contents get shot, restore everything.

This seems to be a work in progress by Intel. I am at a loss as to why
converting a non RAID 1 disc should result in data loss. The RAID 1 config
is a declaration in the front of the disc read by the ICH5R saying
'duplicate'. What this has to do with any partitions that may already exist
on a disc I know not, but it seems that they have no yet put the code in
that says leave the partition table alone (when converting a disc).

So I hope I am clear enough. Advice? Check at the GB and Intel sites for
driver updates before you do this & check the Intel site for documentation -
there is a small amount now. Maybe it will be fixed soon.

If you think I am being unreasonable, I had a play with an proper raid
earlier in the week and that let us make / break / change raid 0,1,5, 10, 50
how you like while the system was running.

- Tim

I'm surprised to hear you had trouble with this. My experience with the
ICH5R RAID 1 has been very good. Adding a second SATA drive to create a RAID
1 set worked without any problems or data loss. I have also deleted a RAID 1
set without any data loss. Deleting the set simply resulted in two normal
SATA drives with identical content. Despite the dire warnings about loosing
all data, neither procedure caused any problems for me. My ICH5R drivers
were downloaded directly from Intel. I haven't tried using RAID 0, but it
seems to me that deleting a RAID 0 set would almost certainly destroy data
on both drives. Maybe someone else can relate their experiences with RAID 0.


--
Giga-Byte GA-8KNXP v.2.0 Motherboard w/ Award BIOS v. FE
Pentium 4 2.8 w/800 MHz FSB Intel 875P Chipset
1GB Kingston HyperX PC3500 (@ 2.6v
2 Western Digital 120 GB SATA Hard Drives
RAID 1 on Intel ICH5R (v3.5.0.2568)
MSI FX5600 - AGP 8X 128MB DDR Video Card (Nvidia v.52.16)
Leadtek WinFast 2000 TV/FM PCI Multi-Media card
U.S. Robotics 56K V90 PCI Modem
Plextor PX-708A 8X DVD-RW (IDE 2 Master)
Plextor PX-116A DVD-ROM (IDE 2 Slave)
Teac 1.44 3.5" Floppy Disk Drive
Creative Labs Audigy II Platinum Sound card
Enermatic "Noistaker" 470 watt ATX Power Supply
Win XP Pro SP-1 O.E.M.


"Tim" wrote in message ...
Hi all.

For those that ever contemplate "what do you do when want to convert a
single SATA disc to RAID 1" read on. Its currently a pain.

Basically, the Intel ICH5R drivers and bios should IMHO be up to date - I
use bios F9 (rev 1 board) and the 3.5.? drivers. Note: the supposed RAID
driver on the GB site did not work when I booted into Partition Magic to
do
the eventual restore - I had to use the Intel 3.5 version drivers for PM
to
see the RAID disc.

I already had the system supposedly 'Raid Ready' by having the single SATA
drive hanging off the controller running in RAID mode - but not in raid
mode
since it was only a single drive. The Intel documentation refers to this
as
Raid Ready.

When you install the second SATA drive, IAA then offers the option to
create
a RAID 0 or 1 config.

Now, since mirroring is a COPY of the data, what would you expect? Shove
the
drive in, click some buttons, click Yes to are you sure? Then sit back
while
the Intel chip duplicated the disc?

Yes of course that is what SHOULD happen, but its not. The documentation
(What little there is) currently implies that you can do this with RAID 0
at
run time. Yes - Raid 0!!!! (I don't know if this works - please have a
backup if you try it and report back), but doesn't say squat about RAID 1.
If you try to do this via IAA it says twice loudly that you are going to
lose all data.

Basically the method is as bad is it gets: Backup everything, set a RAID 1
config via BIOS - disc contents get shot, restore everything.

This seems to be a work in progress by Intel. I am at a loss as to why
converting a non RAID 1 disc should result in data loss. The RAID 1 config
is a declaration in the front of the disc read by the ICH5R saying
'duplicate'. What this has to do with any partitions that may already
exist
on a disc I know not, but it seems that they have no yet put the code in
that says leave the partition table alone (when converting a disc).

So I hope I am clear enough. Advice? Check at the GB and Intel sites for
driver updates before you do this & check the Intel site for
documentation -
there is a small amount now. Maybe it will be fixed soon.

If you think I am being unreasonable, I had a play with an proper raid
earlier in the week and that let us make / break / change raid 0,1,5, 10,
50
how you like while the system was running.

- Tim