Windows 10: Quick Discussion of native RAID 0 support in Windows 10

On the Microsoft Forums Someone wrote:
Again, not one single post in thousands I've helped with in forums about RAID that was positive - every single one was either a problem or a disaster.

And if you already knew the answer then why did you ask?
I qualified my opinion as exactly that yet you still reply without even the most basic human decency.

I responded--even though the above was not written to me. This may or may not be of interest to anyone considering RAID 0 and Windows 10--so I thought I'd repost it here as there may be some folks unfamiliar with how to stripe drives in Windows 10 for RAID 0 performance without having to use either an integrated or dedicated RAID controller & without specific RAID drivers as well.

I was searching this evening for info an the AMD SB950 IDE/AHCI/RAID controller support--which atm does not support RAID mode on an EVO SSD. The problem is that I could not setup RAID normally, from inside UEFI, because then my boot drive--the Samsung EVO 850 won't run--even though it is not in the RAID config. So I had to set my UEFI contorller to AHCI (the only mode the EVO will run on through my AMD SB950), but I wanted to setup a couple of my other drives in RAID 0--without changing the UEFI bios setting from AHCI to RAID.

Over the years I've heard a lot of negative stuff about RAID that simply isn't true, so I responded below to the original poster as follows...*Wink Again, hope you find it at least slightly informative...if not, well, gosh, I...*Tongue


Guy, I'm very late to this thread...but you should take a look at the Windows forums where tens of thousands of people write about the "problems" they have or had with Windows......*Wink By your definition *no one* should be using Windows, either. Your comment above is ridiculous, frankly. When you've been in this business for a few years you'll realize that the *only* people who write threads in hardware/software sections are people with *problems* seeking answers. People who aren't having problems likely outnumber the people who are by at least 10-1, and *you never see them writing in RAID or Windows threads*--uh, because they aren't having any problems...! Your sentiment above is completely wrong.

More to the point, I've successfully used RAID 0 in a number of hardware scenarios and in a number of Windows versions without a *single* problem in ten years--I mean, not one! In fact, the only hard drive I've had go out on me when I was using it was running as IDE--not RAID, ironically. You see, neither the drives, the controllers, nor the OS version gives a bloody damn whether you run the drive in RAID or IDE--it's all the same to the drive and the OS.

People who are down on RAID are down on it because they know nothing about it except what they've read from other people having problems with it--people just like you. Had you used it and had you experience with it you'd know the truth of what I & Hawk say here.

More to the point--did you know that Windows 10 natively supports RAID 0? And no--I don't mean "with the proper drivers"--I mean with the standard Windows IDE/AHCI drivers. Pop open the computer management console, run the Disk Management program and let the fun begin. Take any two physical drives (maybe even 3--I haven't tried that yet), tell Windows you want a "striped drive partition" and Windows will give it to you and convert both drives to dynamic from basic automatically--and will stripe the drives and prepare partitions across both drives of whatever sizes you set out of what's available. Striping two physical drives and using them as a single partition is RAID 0, my friend. And Windows 10 supports it natively. The only limit to a dynamic partition is that you cannot boot from it--so you'd want to keep your boot drive as a basic drive in this scenario.

I actually found this thread because I also have an SB950 and have known for awhile that the AMD controller driver doesn't support RAID for the EVOs--and I searched this evening to see if anything has changed--and I guess not...*Wink Anyway, for people who are interested in how Windows 10 supports RAID 0 right out of the box, now you know how it can be done *without* the need for specialized RAID controller drivers. So long as a Hawk wasn't going to use his boot drive in the RAID 0 config and so long as he has two more EVOs to run in RAID 0 that are non-boot drives--this method would work fine in that case for the non-boot drives & RAID 0.

This is basically "software raid" but the truth is that it runs real close to what integrated hardware RAID 0 controllers do--*real* close in performance. You'd have to go to a dedicated PCIe RAID 0 controller to get better performance, in fact.

Last, what I've heard about RAID 0 for years is this and it's very silly: "If one drive goes out, you lose all your data." Guess what, though, a single IDE/AHCI drive has 0 fault tolerance. A pair of single IDE/AHCI drives running in RAID 0 also has 0 fault tolerance. So in either situation--with one drive running as IDE/AHCI, or with two drives running in RAID 0, if a drive goes, you lose your data! It makes no difference at all.

Now, if there were no benefits to RAID 0, why would Microsoft support it natively in Windows 10? I can tell you it's *much* faster than a single drive--much. So you need to think again on this subject.

:)

 

Installation disk for motherboard is damaged and I need to install a raid driver

It would not be that unusual for mainstream boards such as this from Asus to have RAID interfaces that are natively supported by Windows 10.

Although Chapter 5 details making a RAID Support disk it is written to cover O/S back to Windows XP. Having configured the Array with the BIOS utility I would at least try booting from the Windows 10 DVD and see if it identifies the volume you have created
in the RAID.

However if not then you can download the latests drivers and utilities from ASUS here:

https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/TUF-SABERTOOTH-990FX-R3-0/HelpDesk_Download/

 

Windows 10 support raid 0 and raid 1

Original title: Raid

Does windows 10 support raid 0 and raid 1

 

AMEN!

I've been using software (bootable) RAID0/1 arrays in Mac OS X for many years now. I agree totally, that a single disk = RAID0 of two disks regarding they both have an equal risk of failure in the case one gets lost.

I used to own an expensive Apple RAID Card Pro which was a real PITA and had a high failure rate.

So for many years now I'm very happy with my software RAID0 arrays, given that a very tight back-up chain is needed, properly set up and USED on a daily bases.

Will for sure give this software RAID0 a try in Windows 10 too. Thanks for your post, very informative!

Cheers

 

Thanks, much--yes, RAID 0 is indeed nothing to fear, and the performance benefits are substantial, immediate, and noticeable. Glad you found something of worth in the post!

 

I'm going to respectfully disagree on this. To me, RAID0 had been dead for years. I was part of the group on [H]ardForum that did extensive testing with spinners years ago. The performance looked great with synthetic benchmarks, but didn't translate much in to real-world performance.

What is tangible is the risk of data loss. Now with SSDs being the norm, there's even less of a reason to consider RAID0.

I'll agree with you, that there is nothing to fear for a person who's just playing around in the name of learning, but it has little significance or usage in today's computer. When SSDs were small, it was often cheaper to stripe two together, but cost has rendered that a moot point, too.

My bottom line for this is the same as we had all determined back then. It's your computer, do with it as you please, but be very careful in recommending RAID0 to others. There are very real risks with little to gain. I say this with the reminder that there are synthetic benchmarks meant to show whatever the user desires.

 

Hi,

I beg to differ.
Provided you have a MB that supports RAID configuring a set of 2 SATA SSDs for RAID0 to host your OS is a great way to increase speed.
Naturally you don't have any redundancy and using 2 drives instead of a single one increases the risk of loosing one of them by a factor of *2.
Still, nothing a decent system image can't take care of.
It's not as fast as the latest NVme PCIe 3.0 SSDs but then it's a lot cheaper.

Cheers, *Wink

 

It will increase your speeds in benchmarks, but from a quantifiable standpoint of boot times, application launch times, etc....it probably doesn't amount to a whole lot.

Yeah, I am going to built a desktop/gaming box for my 9 year old for Christmas. I'm putting in a NVme drive onto his mobo. Was around $300 for 512GB.

 

I've never had any reason *not* to recommend it--ten years + use of RAID 0 with no problems says it all. Sure we now have SSD's--I use one to boot--but the point of the post is to say it isn't me recommending RAID 0; it's Microsoft, as you can configure RAID 0 from within Windows 10 without the need for specialized drivers and controllers---the point of my post. You might wish to tell Microsoft why you think it's a bad idea...*Wink They don't think it is--and I don't, either.

Please--again, read my post. RAID 0 is *not* dangerous, nor does it even slightly increase the risk of data loss. This post isn't to advance my opinion--it's to simply demonstrate that RAID 0 doesn't bother Microsoft, either. Guy, if RAID 0 was a problem of any kind I'm sure that somewhere in the last *decade* I'd have run into it...*Wink Instead, all I *ever* run into is people scared of RAID 0 (it's almost like a superstition)--but I have no problems with RAID 0. Not in more than ten years in a variety of drives and systems under a variety of OS's. My conclusions? The people afraid of RAID 0 are afraid for no reason at all.

 

NUFF SAID!!!

Cheers

 

Hi,

Add my 25 years of experience to that. OS running in RAID 0 spanning two SCSI 15K rpm spinners, all data drives in RAID 5 mode.
Those were the days of the SCSI raid controllers a la Mylex, Adaptec, LSI and what have you.
Can't recall ever having a single drive fail on me.
Last big one I had running was a Dell P4600 with a stack of 10 disks in it and dual Xeon CPUs.
No need to turn on the heaters in the room. Got rid of it because it was too noisy and could only run in X86 mode...

Kinda miss the excitement of setting up such monsters though.......

Cheers, *Wink

 

No need to. You are about 7 years late to the game on this. It is more dangerous, unless you believe math is wrong. Are we going to debate math?

Your personal experience is just that. If I told you I lost date three times on RAID0 arrays due to drive failure, does that mean my experience supersedes yours?