Okay, so all I wanted was a simple solution to protect against disk failures.  RAID1 should be a simple solution, right?

After my run in with Windows software RAID, I decided to try the onboard Intel fakeraid to see if it worked better.  Well, it does work better, but there have been issues so far.

The following has already happened twice, and I can't really identify a reason for it.  At some point, basically, all write/read requests to the RAID volume will block.  This causes any Windows application which tries to read/write to the disk to freeze up.  I can't kill the process either (I guess the kernel tries to put the write request through but fails, halting execution of the application, including the kill request).
What's even more annoying is that Windows seems to also block (cache?) write requests to other disks as well; when I noticed the above activity, I quickly saved all my stuff to other disks and rebooted, hoping all would be fine.  Unfortunately not - all the saved files never made it to disk apparently.
After rebooting, the Intel disk management tool would pop up saying that it detected an error and is scanning the HDD to try to fix it.  Fortunately, the scan can be cancelled, unlike in Windows RAID.

I'm liking Intel RAID better than Windows at this point, but this instability is a little worrying.
Have been thinking that perhaps I should just get a NAS, though they seem to expensive at the moment...


Speaking of NASes, I found this awesome deal today: HP ProLiant Microserver for ~$185 with shipping.  AMD dual core 1.3GHz CPU (apparently on-par with a Pentium D 3GHz!), 1GB DDR3 (expandable to 8GB) RAM, 4 HDD ports (comes with a 250GB HDD as well), small form factor, quiet and draws 35W idle.  Awesome but... just dunno what I'd do with it.  I could use it as a NAS, but unfortunately, space and number of power plugs around is limited, for just something that stores data that is.  Also, despite being hell cheap, cost is too much for me for just some HDD storage.  Could be used as a HTPC (find a half height PCIe GPU card to slot in) but wee don't exactly have a good TV to utilise it (plus I'm rarely near the TV).  If I had better internet, could possibly use it as a server.  Seems so useful, but I can't find a use for it T_T

Anyone have any suggestions?

Did you evr loose any files?? i think you have been trying to setup a RAID for years now but i nvr really once lost a single file,.. got 6 HDD's 1 is a SSD,. i had only lost files when i tried to copy an entire HDD content's to another HDD,.... whole load of themeing stuff lost,. :( but nvr lost files just using the PC,....

There's prob loads of PC's with good working RAID set-ups,.. so why won't it work with your PC??

Can't really help here,. ;p,.. i don't really know whot a NAS is for,.

I'm glad I haven't lost any files due to HDD failures, however, I've experienced a failure on the other computer in the house.  Also I can't really risk losing all the data I have either.  Rarely happens, but when it does, well, there goes your stuff down the drain.

I'm really not sure why I get these things.  I know some people use a hardware RAID which probably isn't as susceptible to these issues as onboard RAID.  I've had a RAID0 array on fakeraid for years - no troubles - on my old computer, though this was on a nVidia controller.

NAS = network attached storage.  I've personally never really got the hype around them, but I think I'm starting to see why people spend hundreds of dollars on them.

what operating system are you running?  
I gave up on windows raid and hardware raid last year and went to the unconvention ZFS RaidZ in my Hackintosh

I just migrated from 5x500gb to 3x2tb
Ubuntu and other linux it is natively supported with a package install.  
SnowLeopard/Hackintosh it is supported with a quick pre-hacked install but does not have as 'up to date' build as linux...which hasn't caused me any problems
Solaris is it's native home.

Other than that..a quick word on my raid1 experience.  It is Spoon.  if a file gets corrupt on one drive the smart mirror corrupts it on the other drive :-/  That may be from a bad write/corrupted sectors/windows being retarded...

Building a NAS with ZFS from a cheap computer is very common if you google it.  It is also expandable by easily adding more drives and has the redundancy of raid5.  Linux/Solaris you can even expand to larger harddrives one by one which would have made my transition very easy..instead i had to get another sata controller to host my new drives while i copied everything across.

ZFS looks awesome from what I've seen, but Windows has no support for it :/
I'm not really worried about file corruption, I just want protection from a HDD failure is all.

Thanks for the suggestion nonetheless!

i would still recommend against raid1 and get an extra drive to go raid5.

Why that?  Efficiency?
I'd be wary with RAID5, especially with Windows/Intel solutions.  For one, no dedicated controller = CPU cycles used, but also, if they aren't very reliable in RAID1, there's even less chance of being reliable in RAID5.

Or am I misunderstanding something here?