Windows 7 (64) software RAID1 for heavy NZB downloads

[mkanet]

I've only used poorman's Intel ICHxR controller for RAID1. However, since my Intel RAID controller doesnt recognize my new 4TB HDD's, I have to software RAID them or spend considerably more money for a new HDD external enclosure with builtin RAID.

I have usually >40 simultaneous connections when downloading NZBs (for maintaining stable Internet speed from ISP), I am curious how much CPU resources it would consume when using software RAID 1 instead of integrated Intel MOBO ICH controller RAID 1.

[Quade]

I use software raid on my backup computer. 4 stripped drives. I don't even notice the CPU load to be honest.

Because of the way consumer disk drives work, Newsbin funnels the data from all the connections to a single worker thread that writes it all to disk. The only time you get multiple heavy simultaneous disk IO is when Newsbin is both downloading and unraring/repairing at the same time. You can actually make the downloaders stop writing to disk while the repair/unrar is happening. That's in the performance options.

Anyway, my point is that number of connections isn't connected to Disk IO. The cache layer takes all the data from all the connections and hands it to the write worker.

[mkanet]

Wow, I was hoping someone with personal experience would post. I've heard from other people who do windows software raid 1 or 0 and say their performance is roughly equal (if not faster) to common integrated controllers on motherboards; however, there wasn't much information on resource utilization; especially if there's a RAID 1 resynch running in the background.

This might be the best solution for me; unless I can find a fast estata dual bay enclosure which advertises 4TB HDD compatibility. I really wish I knew if the the dual bay icydock screwless enclosure with builtin raid supports HDD's that large. They only support 3TB HDDs.

[Quade]

My experience has been that software raid using the windows built in stuff has been more reliable than a dedicated card. I've basically given up on dedicated cards except the ones that come on real servers .

[mkanet]

This is very surprising. I'm sure glad I asked! It makes it much easier for me.

[mkanet]

Sorry to keep asking questions here about software RAID. Does anyone know of a very small, light-weight MS software RAID notification tool in Windows system tray? Currently, if a disk fails/resynch's there's no notifications.

[haileris]

There will be a notification in the host event logs. There is a number of ways to provide notifications - just bing / google (example below, not sure if its still valid)

http://www.howtogeek.com/69551/how-to-c ... on-system/

[mkanet]

Unfortunately, its not that simple. RAID status changes dont show up in Event Viewer. The best someone can hope for is being notified when a physical disk has failed. Currently, there is no way to be notified when the RAID partition is resynching or returned to normal; unless someone makes a script to constantly bang away at Diskpart.exe to query status. Im surprised with the growning number of software RAID users, there still isnt any applications that report these types of events in the Windows system tray... the same way Intel Matrix/RST.