Attach new RAID to existing Windows install

shaqazoolu

So I built a monster machine back in early summer and wanted to eventually put a RAID 5 in there for movie backups, music, VMDK's, etc. but I wasn't willing to pay post flood prices for HDDs. I got 2 SSDs in RAID 0 for the OS and have been running off of that in the interim but recently scored 3 1TB Seagate drives for about $60 each for my RAID 5. I got them in the case and plugged in last night. The RAID controller recognizes them, I was able to add them to the RAID, but when Windows boots, it doesn't recognize the volume. I suspected this might happen, but I'm not really sure why or what I need to do to get Windows to recognize it. Any ideas for me to try while I start Googling?

EV42TMAN

Does the RAID management software in windows see the new raid array? If so go to computer management and then go to disk management and initialize the volume and assign it a drive letter. When you add a hard drive or additional raid array to windows it doesn't pick it up like an USB hard drive. You have to manually go and tell it if you want to use MBR or GPT and then what drive letter you want to use etc.

shaqazoolu

Cool deal...I'll give it a shot when I get home and let you know. Thanks.

ptilsen

Are you using RAID controller software, or booting into the RAID controller's firmware? If the latter, and the drives are missing in disk management, you are missing drivers. If they're not missing in disk management, then you have this solved by now and this advice is irrelevant.

However, I will add that I have to strongly recommend against RAID 5 in this circumstance. Unless you have a true hardware RAID controller with its own processor, the performance of RAID 5 is going to be disappointing, and really for relatively little benefit, effectively saving less than $50 in this scenario compared to using RAID 1 2TB drives, post-or-pre-floods pricing. Personally, I would rather sell the drives, use at least one sans-RAID, or buy a fourth and do RAID 10 or 0+1. RAID 5 without a dedicated, quality hardware controller is really an awful experience all around.

I will also point out that SSDs in RAID 0 lose TRIM support, although total performance will ultimately still be better than without RAID.

sratakhin

Why don't you just use software RAID 10? You'll need another drive but it's perfectly fine for a home machine and you can take your drives with to use on another Windows 7 system. If you have hardware RAID, it will be tied up to your RAID controller.

shaqazoolu

EV42TMAN wrote: »

Does the RAID management software in windows see the new raid array? If so go to computer management and then go to disk management and initialize the volume and assign it a drive letter. When you add a hard drive or additional raid array to windows it doesn't pick it up like an USB hard drive. You have to manually go and tell it if you want to use MBR or GPT and then what drive letter you want to use etc.

This is what I needed. Many thanks.

Short answer to all the other questions, if you haven't noticed from the nature of my question, the reason why I didn't do all of those other things is because I don't really know wth I'm doing. Kinda just experimenting with RAID. I appreciate the recommendations though...now I have some reading to do.