1
Windows 7 is becoming ubiquitous and offers a simple software RAID solution within the OS. Modern desktop Linux distros have good software RAID capability as well.
But mid to high end motherboards still ship with fake RAID chipsets.
Responses to an old post mostly recommend the Windows RAID over the fake RAID, and this post mostly says there is no advantage to fake RAID.
So why are these multi-billion dollar hardware companies wasting money developing and building fake RAID chipsets?
Do situations exist where the fake RAID is useful or even desired? When would you ever want to use the motherboard's on-board RAID?
steampowered
Posted 2011-10-09T13:13:32.857
Reputation: 2 109
My best reason for my psudo hardware raid, With Split Raid (0) is it Stays together, today tomorrow , in linux in xp in win7 , and even in win98 :-) I would not care if the windows version of it was 10% faster, it would not help if it does not Stay together from the bios foreward. I am 99.9% using windows, but the integrity of my data exists for that last .1% For Mirror raid only , I would want to analise how often people were getting the rebuild. everytime I hear the word rebuild I can imagine how painfull that must be. Comparing or Copying 1T at todays speeds, uggggg. – Psycogeek – 2011-10-09T13:28:23.327
I once had a fake raid controller fail and recovered all the data using R-studio, which took 30 minutes of reading the manual to configure, then about 24 hours running unattended to recover 2TB of data. Nightly backups make recovery even easier. I am interested in performance benefits. – steampowered – 2011-10-09T13:53:16.927
Being overly cautious (ok paranoid works:-) I always ended up modding my raid cards, both real and faux. I do an extensive thermal analisis, and if my finger hurts afterwards :-) I Feex it, put heat syncs on. Controllers get no respect, and neither does that sata chip on the motherboard. I have run 5 real and 3 fake raids at different times, and didnt lose a byte. But how could i i had a backup :-) – Psycogeek – 2011-10-09T13:59:14.297
@Psycogeek your comment does not relate to performance – steampowered – 2011-10-09T14:02:06.693
1Your right, and I am making the comments messy. The faux raid chip is working, doing a job, for raid0 there is minimal processing required. A "Real raid" advantage is processor and ram, with raid0 it isnt used much, the Controller is where the work is. The faux raid highpoint (pos) is 2 controllers , it has some advantage, even IF the OS is the one using them. Does the OS become a controller? So it is hardware raid :-) even if the OS is going to do the parity? If it is Raid0 where is the parity? Where is most of the work being done, either way? Unless data is to be processed. – Psycogeek – 2011-10-09T14:21:57.383
Do some motherboard raid chips do XOR processing in the hardware? I mostly use faux raid for a raid 5, which requires more processing than raid 0 or raid 1. – steampowered – 2011-10-09T14:37:39.147
1I do not know how much of the Splitting is done in them, but a "fake raid" card, has tiny bits of memory, and seems to be capable of the raid0 Redirections. But When it comes to Parity and comparing and rebuilding , only the "real" raid card is going to "do most of the work" , So indeed with what your talking about any thing without its own processor is fake, and only $$$ is going to fix that. As much as a full processor & ram raid card costs, I suspect that the motherboards would costs a lot more? – Psycogeek – 2011-10-09T14:46:11.637
1Lulz. Fail question. Hardware raid, software raid. They both use hardware and software. – surfasb – 2011-10-10T02:36:00.377
1Fail question? Nobody is giving me a straight answer. I can't believe the multi-billion dollar hardware makers are wasting money on a feature which is worthless. There must be times when this feature is advantageous. – steampowered – 2011-10-10T02:46:45.837