Can I use TI to convert SATA RAID 0 to SATA RAID1?

Well, I have some backups of my RAID 0 drive. I have two 250GB Maxtor SATA drives on an ICH5R raid. After a few issues, I now have a drive issue and was able to run chkdsk c:/f/r. I can boot but still get a sector error on one drive. I was going to format Both drives with the Maxtor utility, but wonder if I can then create a RAID 1 and restore my previous RAID 0 TI backup? I believe that the TI image should not care. Also, after the chkdsk, I also made a TI backup of this "bad" RAID. If I restored that image, would I be putting any bad sectors back on the new array? I assume, since I already have the RAID drivers loaded in RAID 0 that I will at least not have any driver that needs changing.

I am starting to think that I may feel better about RAID1 if there is not too much of a performance hit. In fact, I had thought that the hit is only on a write operation.

TIA

 

If TI has worked okay with your RAID 0 setup, it should work fine with RAID 1. I've restored a RAID 0 setup to RAID 1 on the same computer and didn't have any problems. No driver changes should be necessary.

Only if the partition size is not changed. Most likely you will be changing the size since your RAID 1 setup will be half the size of your RAID 0 setup.

In my experience, RAID 1 performance is pretty much the same as using a single drive. After switching from RAID 0 to RAID 1, I can say that I really do notice the speed difference and am considering going back to RAID 0.

 

Thank you. Well, maybe I will just reformat and go back to RAID 0...or if I have the time, try RAID 1 and see if I notice. A 250GB RAID 1 would be OK as my 500GB RAID 0 is only using about 45GB. As you said, however, if I do go back to RAID 0, the backup "may" just put the bad sectors back on. I wonder if I had RAID 1 and a file cashed, would it try to write it to the mirror and corupt it anyway?

 

I wouldn't worry too much about the bad sectors. If you resize the partition (even just a little bit) during the restore, they won't be marked as bad on the restored partition. Also, if you're running Vista, you can run the new chkdsk option to force a re-check of bad sectors.

RAID 1 drives are supposed to maintain identical data. It's the main reason you shouldn't count on it as a "backup" in the retrieval sense. It will allow for a drive to fail, but if you delete a file, corrupt a file, corrupt a partition, etc., it happens to both drives.

 

Thank you. Yup, I know that I need to backup. I just wondered if the drive had a bad sector if it would try to dupe it in RAID 1. I am only using 1 Partition. Anyway, I ran the Maxtor long read test and 1 drive does show errors. I can try the full write 0 test to see if it will fix it, but if it does fix it, I may try RAID 1. I did this as XP will come up...but if I go to a file during the day (or Norton or Spysweeper scans) I get the drive clicking and windows freezes. Also when I start the system, the Intel ICH5R shows 1 drive has an issue in the RAID.

I do not know how, but TI 9 did do an Image backup without error, but I have another image a few days before the drive went bad so I can try to restore that one. I would hate to go thru all of this and get the drives clean only to have TI put down bad sectors again. I would assume that if TI did a good image, then the errors were not there or even TI would have died!

 

Well, here is what I did using TI9 and a restore with Reatogo (Bart PE).

After having my XP Pro freeze and knowing it was one of my HDD's I ran the Maxtor diagnostic and found the bad drive. Seagate told me to buy a new one. Sure. I have these in a RAID 0 configuration. Two 250GB SATA drives on an ICH5R.

Chkdsk /f/r did not help either. I could boot, and see that the ICH5R reported a bad drive on port 0, but after a a while I could hear the drive doing retries and finally XP would lock up.

Well, I was able to get a good image from TI...not sure how, but I did. So, I then ran a low level format from the Maxtor diagnostics...1 1/2 hours! I used Partition magic to partition the drives as well.

I set the ICH6R to kill the RAID 0 and had it make a RAID 1. Great. I then booted REATOGO and did a restore. It took 17 minutes! I thought it would take a long time as it had to copy the data to the mirror, but it didn't seem as though that mattered. OH, I verified that the drive that was bad now has no bad sectors...both before the TI restore and after.

So, I guess I proved that bad sectors were NOT added back and that we can switch RAID configurations.