Raid 2×2 Tb Disk for boot up in win 7 ?
February 17th, 2014
I read an articel about limitation in Vista like this.
You cannot install or start Windows Vista when the volume of the system partition is larger than 2 terabytes (TB).
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946557/en-us
I want to install raid driver for my 2 x 2gb Harddisk in WIN 7 64bit. And i want to install my Windows on it. Is it possible ? Or should use this disk only for backup ?
Anyone has experience ?
Thanks for your comments.
~lionden~
Well you certainly should not put windows straight on to a 2TB drive…Because if windows stuffs up and you have to reformat, you will loose everything on the drive..
Make a partition for Windows of whatever you think you need on the C: drive (say 100GB).
I guess that can be duplicated on the other drive if you are doing raid..
You can google….win7 use 2tb hdd…. for more info
Most 2TB consumer drives are eco friendly drives and are optimized for power saving and run at lower RPMs and have other stuff (technical junk) that makes them bad for RAID setups. Make sure your drive’s are RAID friendly before putting them in an array. What are the models you got?
Thanks Nel.
I would install raid driver to 2 disks and i would make 500gb C:drive (now i m using 400gb c: ) and maybe two more partitions for the rest 3.5Tb. I thought if i install windows to raid system it will run faster. (am i right )
I can format disks, it is not a problem. But if you mean, because of any error in windows, my data will be maybe lost, it is a big problem. Can you clear that pls
@paroxysM
thanks. I will buy one of this Harddisk. But if u have a better choice, tell me please
Western Digital Caviar Green SATA III 2TB 7200rpm
Seagate Barracuda Green SATA III 2TB 5900 rpm
Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 SATA III 2TB 54500 rpm
it is a big problem. Can you clear that pls
It’s OK, was just thinking of what could happen if you did not have a partition for Windows..
2tb drives are usually meant for data nowadays, not really the best drive for OS loading.
Get a smaller 7200rpm drive for the OS (possibly 500gb – will have 1 platter) and the 2tb for data.
Anything over 2.2tb and you have to do a couple of steps for the drive to be the bootable disk in windows 7.
anelka9 replied: @paroxysMGet some WD RE4s or at the very least some WD Blacks. Green drives are a no no for RAID setups.
thanks. I will buy one of this Harddisk. But if u have a better choice, tell me please
Western Digital Caviar Green SATA III 2TB 7200rpm
Seagate Barracuda Green SATA III 2TB 5900 rpm
Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 SATA III 2TB 54500 rpm
The article you are probably referring to, is about Win XP and earlier not being able to recognise drives more than 2.25TB.
This is an interesting article about how Seagate got around it, by making Windows think this 3TB external has 4k sectors. I’ve got a couple of these drives, pretty good with USB 3.0.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/200031/big_seagate_3tb_drive_ups_storage_ante.html
As people have said, don’t bother using those drives for a RAID array. I don’t think you mentioned if RAID 0 or 1 you are after, but certainly don’t put partitions on a RAID 0 array. (If you lose the OS you lose the lot anyway. I have been using RAID 0 and RAID 5 for years.)
2 x 250 GB or 2x 500 GB drives are more than adequate for RAID 0.
As an exprienced pc owner i had not too much info about raid. Thanks for your comments.
So i will continue using my other disk for windows. Do you recommend two 2tb disks as backup with raid ? Is there any risk of loosing data ? Thanks again.
anelka9 replied: As an exprienced pc owner i had not too much info about raid. Thanks for your comments.
So i will continue using my other disk for windows. Do you recommend two 2tb disks as backup with raid ? Is there any risk of loosing data ? Thanks again.
You are not saying what type of RAID you are talking about.
I personally would use the 2 x 2TB as individual drives for storage. If you use RAID 0 for storage and one drive fails, you lose the lot.
I made a mistake many years ago of buying 2 x LaCie 1TB drives (RAID0) , about £600 each, which both failed under warranty. (Apparently they were just 4 x 250GB Maxtors in the RAID enclosure, lol)
If you use RAID1, then you are effectively halving your storage space to 2TB (but have it mirrored).
If you are looking at effective storage with RAID, and redundancy, then the best option would be RAID 6, but you need more than 2 drives.
thanks gilly.
After your answer, i understand that i should read alittle bit more articels
i thought i can make raid to 2x2tb disks and use 4gb disk as one disk but data transfer through two cables so faster.
What i want to do, i would install windows to raid disks for a better performance (but after some commends here, i understand that it is risky and it wont work faster.)
Now i want to make raid, because i want to copy files faster. But i didnt know raid0 raid1 or raid6. And if i dont install windows to my raid drivers, is it possible to lose data ? or it is only possible, if i install windows to raid drives ?
anelka9 replied: thanks gilly.
After your answer, i understand that i should read alittle bit more articels
i thought i can make raid to 2x2tb disks and use 4gb disk as one disk but data transfer through two cables so faster.
What i want to do, i would install windows to raid disks for a better performance (but after some commends here, i understand that it is risky and it wont work faster.)
Now i want to make raid, because i want to copy files faster. But i didnt know raid0 raid1 or raid6. And if i dont install windows to my raid drivers, is it possible to lose data ? or it is only possible, if i install windows to raid drives ?
RAID 0 does give better performance for an operating system,eg. for gaming, but you need to be using smaller and faster drives, eg 2 x 250g 7200 rpm SATAII or 3. You will obviously get an even faster system with an SSD.
RAID 0 is not very fault tolerant – so if there is an issue with one drive, it affects the other also, as the data is spread across both drives.
Using RAID 0 you have to be prepared to lose eveything on those 2 drives in the flash of a second, so need to do regular backups. I have been using RAID 0 for years, and only had a few problems, but I always backup all my data to an external and data dvd/br.
I also use hardware RAID. I use Intel ICH7R/DH SATA RAID controller in this system, which is quite old (about 5 years or so)
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-020644.htm
RAID 6 is fairly new in usage.
Read this and it will give you a better understanding of the setups.
http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/neuffer/scsi/what_is_raid.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
If you just want to use your disks for storage, and don’t have enough room to fit them in your puter – you can simply put each one in an external hard drive enclosure, they are relatively cheap, and connect however you want (depending on your system and the enclosure)
I have seen these for sale with a RAID setup (6TB)
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=390330345289
I’m fairly certain you can buy the enclosure on it’s own from the manufacturer, but personally I would go with 2 seperate enclosures.
thanks gilly. after your message i searched in internet and found your link yesterday.
Thank you and other guys for replying my posts and giving me information about this subject.
anelka9 – I forgot to mention another option on how to use your drives, a friend reminded me today as he bought one of these…
LG N2B1D 2 Bay Blu-ray NAS Enclosure. I am not sure if you could afford one of these, or it would suit your purposes eg. with Bluray. It also gives the option of using RAID0/1
I don’t know where you are either, but found this link on E-Bay UK for $250 = p&p
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LG-N2B1D-2-Bay-NAS-w-hot-swap-RAID-Blu-ray-rewriter-/250872525837
(I might just get one myself )
thanks gilly. it seems really interesting. I paid 2000 $ for my pc. so i will think about it
RAID 6 is fairly new in usage.
And is pretty stupid to use if you have less than 8 disks. The cost per usable space is too high compared to RAID 5 to be feasible with no potential advantages of 6 over 5 with such a small array. RAID 6 is for very large arrays. For even larger arrays hardware RAID doesn’t work that well and you’d need something like ZFS.
-paroxysM^ replied: ZFS? that’s ok if you don’t mind at least hours of downtime. Resilver even on a raidz3 can take days, and ZFS don’t have Block Pointer Rewrite, so defragmentation is another drawback. reconfiguring the number of devices in a top level vdev is another problem, there are many others, but let’s just say this is not something for a time critical system!!. for a personal system that can afford downtime, if you really need that large storage capacity, and don’t get bored too easy, it’s ok.. RAID 6 is fairly new in usage.
And is pretty stupid to use if you have less than 8 disks. The cost per usable space is too high compared to RAID 5 to be feasible with no potential advantages of 6 over 5 with such a small array. RAID 6 is for very large arrays. For even larger arrays hardware RAID doesn't work that well and you'd need something like ZFS.
radios1 replied: There you go with your irrelevant answers yet again. We’re not talking about reconfiguring arrays or the time needed to configure/initialize them. I just pointed out that RAID 6 is not suitable for such a small array and that it should be used for arrays with more than 8 drives and I just mentioned that ZFS existed. Fragmentation has zero negative implications for ZFS.-paroxysM^ replied: ZFS? that's ok if you don't mind at least hours of downtime. Resilver even on a raidz3 can take days, and ZFS don't have Block Pointer Rewrite, so defragmentation is another drawback. reconfiguring the number of devices in a top level vdev is another problem, there are many others, but let's just say this is not something for a time critical system!!. for a personal system that can afford downtime, if you really need that large storage capacity, and don't get bored too easy, it's ok.. RAID 6 is fairly new in usage.
And is pretty stupid to use if you have less than 8 disks. The cost per usable space is too high compared to RAID 5 to be feasible with no potential advantages of 6 over 5 with such a small array. RAID 6 is for very large arrays. For even larger arrays hardware RAID doesn't work that well and you'd need something like ZFS.
and don't get bored too easy, it's ok..Man you have no idea how exceptionally boring you are.
-paroxysM^ replied: RAID 6 is fairly new in usage.
And is pretty stupid to use if you have less than 8 disks. The cost per usable space is too high compared to RAID 5 to be feasible with no potential advantages of 6 over 5 with such a small array. RAID 6 is for very large arrays. For even larger arrays hardware RAID doesn't work that well and you'd need something like ZFS.
Umm – where in my post did I recommend him using RAID 6 ? (seeing as the quote is from my post)
I was trying to making him understand what RAID was by providing information…