Raid 0 possibly causing problems with install?

[paradigm]

I am currently trying to install BT4 pre-release and besides the language crashing on starting the install.sh thing on the live disk gui (it still works and is still english) there seems to be a problem with it recognizing any partition on my 2 Raid 0 configured 7200 rpm 500 gb hard drives. i used the gPARTED live disk for the partitions and that found them just fine. i had one 80 gb and the rest was windows. backtrack 4 pre release seemed to not find any sort of data on the disk at all. it just saw 2 500 gb (actually a number in the high 400's) hard drives that were supposedly empty. i tryed formatting the 80 gb option in every option possible. could raid cause this? how do i fix it?

[thewheelieking]

I am having same issue. Anyone got some ideas?

TIA TIA

[Gitsnik]

I don't know about RAID causing this - I suppose if it is software raid (you didn't specify, but I'm guessing it is) it could because it tends to depend on the system in place.

For the record, a good rule of thumb: RAID0 is called RAID-Zero because that's the number of files you're likely to get back if a drive fails*

Do you have a hardware RAID card? Could you mirror the drives (RAID-1) to see how they go together?

*Yes people I know. I've done enough forensics to understand the real story behind this, but it's a good rule of thumb and funny to boot.

[purehate]

I was always under the impression that in software raid the boot partition cannot be in raid 0 anyway. The boot partition must be raid 1 and then you can make the rest raid 0. Software raid pretty much sucks in my opinion and I have never had much luck with it. best thing to do is get a hardware raid card and a couple ssd drives. Then you will be flying.

[imported_happyharrysco]

I was always under the impression that in software raid the boot partition cannot be in raid 0 anyway. The boot partition must be raid 1 and then you can make the rest raid 0. Software raid pretty much sucks in my opinion and I have never had much luck with it. best thing to do is get a hardware raid card and a couple ssd drives. Then you will be flying.

everything on raid0 has worked here for years, and never a failure yet, of course ymmv, and if your buying i'll easily try that route

I am currently trying to install BT4 pre-release and besides the language crashing on starting the install.sh thing on the live disk gui (it still works and is still english) there seems to be a problem with it recognizing any partition on my 2 Raid 0 configured 7200 rpm 500 gb hard drives. i used the gPARTED live disk for the partitions and that found them just fine. i had one 80 gb and the rest was windows. backtrack 4 pre release seemed to not find any sort of data on the disk at all. it just saw 2 500 gb (actually a number in the high 400's) hard drives that were supposedly empty. i tryed formatting the 80 gb option in every option possible. could raid cause this? how do i fix it?

once the live image of bt4pre loads do,

apt-get install dmraid

this will enumerate your raid0 array, from then it will work perfectly, boot partitions and all

[streaker69]

everything on raid0 has worked here for years, and never a failure yet, of course ymmv

"Striped set without parity" or "Striping". Provides improved performance and additional storage but no redundancy or fault tolerance. Because there is no redundancy, this level is not actually a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, i.e. not true RAID. However, because of the similarities to RAID (especially the need for a controller to distribute data across multiple disks), simple stripe sets are normally referred to as RAID 0. Any disk failure destroys the array, which has greater consequences with more disks in the array (at a minimum, catastrophic data loss is twice as severe compared to single drives without RAID). A single disk failure destroys the entire array because when data is written to a RAID 0 drive, the data is broken into fragments. The number of fragments is dictated by the number of disks in the array. The fragments are written to their respective disks simultaneously on the same sector. This allows smaller sections of the entire chunk of data to be read off the drive in parallel, increasing bandwidth. RAID 0 does not implement error checking so any error is unrecoverable. More disks in the array means higher bandwidth, but greater risk of data loss.

Yep, working for years, until one day it doesn't, and all your stuff is gone. I've seen it happen, and it seldom ends well. More often than not, you either cannot recover anything, or you'll have to re-mortgage your home to send the drives out to a data recovery place to try and have it recovered.

If you're running a RAID0, it's only a matter of time.

[imported_happyharrysco]

Yep, working for years, until one day it doesn't, and all your stuff is gone. I've seen it happen, and it seldom ends well. More often than not, you either cannot recover anything, or you'll have to re-mortgage your home to send the drives out to a data recovery place to try and have it recovered.

If you're running a RAID0, it's only a matter of time.

true enough but that's what backups are for, and anyone running raid0 without regular backups of data they care about is taking a risk, but in my old devel/testing rig i have 2 wd 250gb re drives in raid0 that have been in use for 2 1/2 years and i've not needed to use any of the backups yet, maybe i'm lucky, or maybe using the right hardware for the job helps, who knows? but the scaremongering is a little bit much, better to suggest regular backups or even raid01 than to swear off raid all together imho

[streaker69]

true enough but that's what backups are for, and anyone running raid0 without regular backups of data they care about is taking a risk, but in my old devel/testing rig i have 2 wd 250gb re drives in raid0 that have been in use for 2 1/2 years and i've not needed to use any of the backups yet, maybe i'm lucky, or maybe using the right hardware for the job helps, who knows? but the scaremongering is a little bit much, better to suggest regular backups or even raid01 than to swear off raid all together imho

Considering the average lifespan of harddrives is between 3 to 4 years, I hope you've tested your backups, and actually attempted a restore before you rely upon them. I know it's very easy for people to know they're backing stuff up, but never actually test it out.

As for scaremongering, I'm talking from tons of experience in the matter, and no one ever said to swear off RAID all together, just RAID0. Some machines are RAID1 some are RAID5. But I would never rely upon RAID0 for anything important. Since restoring the OS and then restoring from backup is very time consuming. Whereas fixing a RAID5 can be done without even bringing the machine down, and fixing RAID1 is a matter of shutting down the machine, pulling the bad, installing new, rebooting and re-establish the mirror.

To me, it makes sense to not only have backup's handy, but not have to necessarily rely upon them when you have other methods of maintaining the integrity of the system.