P67A-UD4: can't expand RAID setup

[arama]

I have a p67A-UD4 board and 3 x 1TB WD drives. 2 of these drives are in raid0 with everything including the OS on it. The other drive has nothing on it.

What I'm wanting to do is add that drive to the existing array, without cleaning everything off. I tried to do it with the XHD utility that came with the board, but no luck. The AUTO option tells me it's not supported, that's with XHD enabled and disabled in bios.

The intel rapid storage utility lets me look at the array and raid setup, as well as the other drive. Going through the manuals tells me that i should be able to do it through this program, by clicking on either the array or volume in the storage view, and then clicking add to the array.
However there is no option that comes up at all that enables me to do anything to the array. The only thing that does come up is the disk data cache option.

So is it possible to add a drive to the array without wiping them and rebuilding from scratch. And if so, how? Does the problem have anything to do with the 2TB limit to a partition with MBR  on it with OS ive read about? ( I would be creating a 3TB partition from the raid) I've turned off XHD in the bios also.

Any advice would be great, as the missus is worried after i told her i've just doubled the chance of losing all our data with a raid0  (therefore her photos).
I'd also like to change to RAID5 to combat this, and later change to RAID10 after i get another drive. But for the moment being able to add that drive to the current RAID0 would be good, and then change to RAID5 for the meantime.

[DemoniK]

For a RAID 0 - to expand the RAID you need to add 2 drives..
As you rightly point out RAID0 is for performance and not redundancy...
Only thing to do is move your data to either build the new RAID volume and move data to it, or move data to a temp location and build your RAID volume from scratch.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

Firstly I take it that you are aware of the SATA2 port problems with thsi range of motherboards and so the only safe ports to use are the SATA3 ports. You only have two of them so you would have to run the RAID off the SATA2 controller. You had better tell the wife that the chances of losing all her photos has just gone sky high!

If you decide to run just the two drives as RAID0 on the SATA3 ports then you are a bit safer but don't forget that RAID0 has no redundancy built in like RAID1.

I think you are right about the reasoning for you not being able to add the third drive which would make the partition to big.

[arama]

Thanks for the fast replies.
Yeah I'm waiting for the B3 boards to be available here (NZ) and will replace it asap. That's why im so anxious to at least setup a raid5 for some sort of protection in the meantime.
I had to set it up this way because all my data was on one of the drives from and x58 build which i don't have any longer, just kept the hd. so when i had made the raid0 on this pc, installed everything, i then copied over all my data to the array and then wanted to expand it with the drive that the data was originally on. Was there an easier way to do this, keeping in mind i don't have any external or temp storage to use?
Do i really need to grab another harddrive to expand the raid? If that's the case, I don't think i'll bother, since i wanted the next drive i brought to be a ssd.
What do you think would be the best solution to keep a happy wife in the meantime, and in the future?
I'm thinking an ssd for OS and programs, raid5 the 3 hd's for storage...

[Dark Mantis]

You do realise that you can't just move a RAID from one controller to another don't you? The controllers would have to be identical to make it work.

[arama]

yeah i know that. I don't quite understand why your asking about using a raid setup from this build somewhere else.
Should i not bother with raid at all until the new boards come out, so im protected from the controllers crapping up my data?

[Dark Mantis]

I thought this was a RAID array that you had brought from another board previously and wanted to install on this motherboard.

I can't really understand though why you want to use a RAID0 setup for data storage as surely speed of access isn't your greatest priority but redundancy is. I would advise either running a RAID1 array or two seperate drives that you can manually keep backed up.

I certainly wouldn't recommend using anything other than the SATA3 ports (except for optical drives) on this board until it is exchanged.

[DemoniK]

I think he's asking can he add a drive to his newly created RAID0 volume to make it a RAID5 - i.e. add in the parity and thus provide redundancy...

I think (could be wrong - never needed to do it) the Intel chipset should support this as long as the drive matches the size - but you won't expand/enlarge the capacity array - but migrate it...
Also - AFAIK it can only be done with the windows software and not the BIOS. AND it takes an age to perform.

Some links to checkout
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/cs-020674.htm
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022435.htm
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-021520.htm

I've never done it - but in theory it's perfectly possible to construct the parity stripe on the 3rd disk. You won't get extra space - just redundancy...

one last note - Intel RAID uses your CPU to calculate the parity, etc.. So moving to such a redundancy type array usually slows down your write performance.

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I would agree with DemoniK on everything there. I did wonder if I got hold of the wrong end of the stick to start with. It seems an awful lot of trouble though for what would be achieved.

[arama]

Yup Demonik has it right. that's what i wanted to do basically, 2-drive RAID 0 to 3-drive RAID 5. Sorry i didn't explain it properly.
Those links were exactly what i was looking for.
However you are right dark mantis, this option is looking less and less worth it each time. Any suggestions for a setup with 3 drives. 1 optical, with a board that really only has 2 safe connections?

[Dark Mantis]

Yes certainly. The best option is to use your hard drives on the SATA3 ports as that is where the main stress will be and then just put your optical drive on one of the SATA2 ports as it isn't used anywhere nearly as much or with as much throughput. Should be fine like that.

[arama]

just reading those links, what i wanted to do is completely possible. would this be through the intel rapid storage software? because it didn't let me try it at all, as explained in the first post.
I probably won't end up doing now it but just for future reference.

[Dark Mantis]

I am not 100% sure but the Gigabyte XHD only alllows you to add extra drives to an existing array but not change the type of array altogether as far as I know.

The IRST has taken over from the old Matrix Storage so that would be the one to use.

[arama]

For some reason, neither XHD or IRST let me add to or change the raid. Strange. All 3 hd are identical 1TB.
I Might abandon raid altogether, seems like to much trouble,
I'm thinking 2 hd's on the sata3 with data (no raid), and optical and OS hd on the sata2 ports. Thoughts?

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I would agree and you can run manual backups as and when you feel necessary. I think in your case it is the more logical way to go.