Windows 10: I've made a Raid 10 for my PC...or have I? Help!

So previously I had a single 512GB SSD for my OS and a single 2TB mechanical HDD for my work, general storage, and anything like game installs. All my important programs are also on the SSD.

I'm a Designer who does a lot of 3D work (modeling and rendering), and the 2TB drive has filled up pretty quickly as my freelance projects and personal projects grow. Since some of this work has quite a lot of monetary value, and the size of the files are getting quite big, I thought a raid would complement my setup. Yes, a raid isn't redundancy before you all say it! I have a 6TB external drive as well for backup. But the increase in redundancy and the increase in speed from RAID10 would really help my workflow, which can involve massive 3D renders and 4k footage. I bought 4 2TB Seagate drives. I'm also using software raid, I understand that's a discussion on it's own.

I followed this guide here: https://www.pcgamer.com/how-set-raid-10-windows-8-and-l...

First of all I had a problem with some of my brand new drives showing up as removable media, but after googling this turned out to be a feature and not an error. Some regedit fixed that. Next I found that using just Disk Management tool wouldn't work alone, and would take 8+ hours to format everything. That's when I found the guide.

I followed it and now i've got something weird looking. Here: https://i.imgur.com/XVvpNJe.png

The first part of the guide uses Windows 10 pooling tool to create to two RAID1 setups. These you can see I named Stripe 1 and Stripe 2. Then the guide says to use Disk Mangment to create a Raid 0 from those. Which you can see i've also done.

However, the original Stripe1 and Stripe2 have not gone away, and even weird, as I move stuff onto the Raid mount, the space used does not change on either of them. Since I plan on moving my work from the old 2TB drive onto this RAID10, I want to be sure its setup right (as I will delete it off the old drive after).

So have I done this right? Is my RAID10 actually setup? Is there anyway to check it's actually done it? Why are those stripes still there? Why is the size not changing? Does that matter? Anyway to get rid of them?

Thanks in advance, this is all really delicate because losing work could cost me weeks of time and stuff I can't recreate pixel perfect, not to mention the clients I might lose if this Removed up.

Someone on Reddit has since suggested I click "Delete Volume" on each stripe - and this had indeed unmounted them. However this wasn't an option when I was making it (both were "Unallocated"), and this still hasn't given me any confidence that my Raid is in effects.

Disk Management loos like this: https://i.imgur.com/9QQQtBV.png

Why are there two raids!? Why are there 4 drives listed separately? Have I actually just got a Raid0 by accident?

:)

 

Upgrading to Windows 10 with RAID setup

I've been receiving upgrade notifications for a long time now for Windows 10 from Windows 7 Pro. The problem I have is that I'm running RAID 0 and RAID 10 on the system with an onboard RAID controller. If I upgrade will it break my RAID's?

 

Upgrade from Windows 7 to 10 - Raid hard drives now corrupted

I've removed one of my two RAID drives, put it in an external drive case with USB interface and can access it. It strongly suggests to me that the RAID was set to one before and the upgrade to Windows 10 has caused the problem wherein it thinks it's raid
0. So, I've hopefully now copied all of my previously not backed up data to a portable USB hard drive.

My thought was to put the hard drive back into the PC, go back into the bios and cancel the current RAID 0 setting, probably reformat the drives and then reset it to RAID 1. Then copy all of my data back onto it from the portable hard drive. Hopefully
that will work.

 

Bump please, i;m very confused.

 

Hi,
In 10 I believe the term is storage spaces not raid
Just go to Manage storage spaces from this tutorial and there are some related tutorials at the bottom of it too
Change Storage Save Locations in Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

 

This only allows Raid0, Raid1, or Raid 5. I need Raid10!

 

Does your controller support RAID10? In my opinion and experience, you are going to have some potential issues trying to mix non-RAID drives and an array if you are using the onboard controller.

Your best bet, since the system is booting properly, is to buy a RAID controller and attach the four Seagate drives. Then you set up the array outside of the OS, and it is seen as a single drive within Windows.

 

I was a bit put off by using a hardware raid as they are harder to recover from if the controller has a problem. Software raids, especially done through Windows, seem must safer. Is this wrong?

The problem is creating pools doesn't seem to be working.

 

It depends. Do you want to buy a replacement RAID controller or a replacement motherboard, if there is a failure?

Either point is moot if you keep a proper backup routine. I recently did away with a NAS device in favor of a Windows Server with a RAID array. I bought a MegaRAID controller on eBay for $40, and it's a faster solution than any onboard software controller. I have a total of an 8TB RAID5 array, and an 8TB external drive to keep as a backup. A controller failure won't result in any loss of data for me.

 

Ok, well I have four 2TB drives and an Asus X79 Deluxe. Is there anything specific I need to look for when buying a raid controller?

 

Here's a 2015 thread from Tomshardware.com (disclosure: I wrote for them from 2000 through 2012 or so, still write all the time for their spin-off site, TomsITPro.com) that recommends an LSI raid controller. I've read LOTS of other good info and end-user endorsements all over the Web. I'm a little puzzled that I can't find anything newer with recommendations, though...
HTH,
--Ed--

 

Using a controller has always been the preferred method of implementing RAID. Software RAID is poor mans RAID, used when you can't afford anything better. With the current availability of inexpensive RAID controllers there is little reason to use software RAID, certainly when reliability is a concern.

 

Thanks to Ed's recommendation, I bought an LSI MegaRAID 9260-4i. It's the one I mentioned was $40 on eBay. You need to make sure it has enough ports, and supports the pci slot type your motherboard has and RAID levels you want.

 

At least i'm not the only one puzzled! Thank you.

 

It just seemed easier considering I have everything I need to start, and I couldn't find any modern articles comparing and recommending raid cards. Plus I will eventually have 3 GPUs in my machine so I didn't want to take up pcie lanes.