Moving from single SSD to RAID 0 without reinstalling Windows 10

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to phrase this in Google ... so I failed at figuring it out on my own.  Here is my plan:

 

Currently I have Windows 7 on my desktop.  I plan on buying another Samsung Pro 512 (same SSD my Windows 7 is on).  I'm going to clone my Windows 7 install to that drive and upgrade it to Windows 10 and then disconnect the "old" Windows 7 drive.  After a month or so...once I'm confident that everything is good to go ... I'm going to reconnect and format the "old" Windows 7 drive which will leave me a clean SSD.

 

What I would like to do ... is use that drive to create a RAID 0 ... but without reinstalling Windows 10.  Soooo....my question is ... is this possible?

 

Samsung Pro 512 - Windows 10  --->

Samsung Pro 512 - blank 

-->

2x Samsung Pros in RAID 0 = Windows 10 (without reinstall)

 

Or would it be best to clone the Windows 7 drive to my older OCZ SSD (which is currently blank) ... install Windows 10 ... make sure it works ... create a RAID 0 out of the two Samsung drives and then clone the OCZ to the newly created RAID 0.

 

Does that make sense?

 

I'm not very familiar with working with RAID in Windows (only Linux/FreeBSD/non-OS drives in Windows).

[Tomo]

Firstly please don't use RAID 0, if one drive fails then the whole thing fails.

 

If you must do this then make an image of the hard drive, configure the RAID and then clone the image back to the RAID. You may need to use a tool such as Paragon Hard Disk Manager to inject the RAID drivers into the WIndows installation.

[joemailey]

I'm pretty sure you'll need to take an image backup, create raid 0 partition using the two drives and then restore you image to the new raid 0 partition.

 

Don't think there is anyway just to add a drive and enable raid 0 without doing a restore of backup/image or full reinstall of windows.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

  On 12/04/2016 at 14:27, Tomo said:

Firstly please don't use RAID 0, if one drive fails then the whole thing fails.

 

If you must do this then make an image of the hard drive, configure the RAID and then clone the image back to the RAID. You may need to use a tool such as Paragon Hard Disk Manager to inject the RAID drivers into the WIndows installation.

Expand  

Thanks for the suggestion.  Sorry, I should have mentioned that I'm not particularly worried about drive failures ... I keep everything backed up daily on my freenas and/or the cloud.  I just do not want to go through the whole process of reinstalling all my programs right now ... but obviously will if one of the SSDs failed in RAID 0.

 

So...what you and joemailey are saying is I should use the OCZ as the "staging" drive...not the Samsung(s)?

[Tomo]

  On 12/04/2016 at 14:38, jjkusaf said:

Thanks for the suggestion.  Sorry, I should have mentioned that I'm not particularly worried about drive failures ... I keep everything backed up daily on my freenas and/or the cloud.  I just do not want to go through the whole process of reinstalling all my programs right now ... but obviously will if one of the SSDs failed in RAID 0.

 

So...what you and joemailey are saying is I should use the OCZ as the "staging" drive...not the Samsung(s)?

Expand  

Yes make an image of the current installation onto the OCZ, set up the two Samsungs as RAID 0 and then clone the image back to the RAID 0.

 

To be honest it would probably be quicker just to re-install Windows 10.

[Open Minded]

  On 12/04/2016 at 14:27, Tomo said:

Firstly please don't use RAID 0, if one drive fails then the whole thing fails.

Expand  

What happens if he wants more speed than a single SSD can offer? 

 

I have two SSDs in RAID 0 and it's great.  Who cares if it dies, I'm enjoying 1 GB/s transfer speeds.  I have everything I need backed up so it's no big deal if it dies.

 

 

[Tomo]

  On 12/04/2016 at 14:43, Open Minded said:

What happens if he wants more speed than a single SSD can offer? 

 

I have two SSDs in RAID 0 and it's great.  Who cares if it dies, I'm enjoying 1 GB/s transfer speeds.  I have everything I need backed up so it's no big deal if it dies.

 

 

Expand  

Just warning him of the potential consequences, it's up to you if you want to run RAID 0. Just make sure you have an adequate backup of all your data and be prepared to start from scratch if one of them fails.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

  On 12/04/2016 at 14:42, Tomo said:

Yes make an image of the current installation onto the OCZ, set up the two Samsungs as RAID 0 and then clone the image back to the RAID 0.

 

To be honest it would probably be quicker just to re-install Windows 10.

Expand  

yea...I've thought about it ... but I've also thought about reinstalling all the programs/games  ... which would take a very long time.  I'll have to uninstall a few things just to get the Win7 install to fit onto the smaller OCZ drive.

 

  On 12/04/2016 at 14:43, Open Minded said:

What happens if he wants more speed than a single SSD can offer? 

 

I have two SSDs in RAID 0 and it's great.  Who cares if it dies, I'm enjoying 1 GB/s transfer speeds.  I have everything I need backed up so it's no big deal if it dies.

Expand  

yea...that is what I'm wanting to achieve ... more speed w/o having to invest in a new mobo with NVMe.   Great advice though by Tomo ... to ensure that data is backed up frequently just incase one SSD fails...such advice should be given to everyone regardless of how their system is setup.

 

So...my new plan ....

 

Clone the current Win7 Samsung to the OCZ.  Disconnect the Samsung and upgrade the OCZ to Windows 10.  After a few weeks...ensuring Windows 10 is working properly....create a RAID 0 with the two Samsungs.  Clone the OCZ drive w/ Windows 10 over to the newly created Samsung RAID 0.  Win?  Surely there is something I have to do prior to the cloning so that Windows 10 knows that it is now on a RAID?

[Tomo]

The RAID drive will look and act like a physical drive to Windows 10, providing it has the RAID drivers. As I mentioned in my first post you may need to use a tool to inject the RAID drivers into the installation, I know Paragon is capable of this using it's P2P Adjust OS function.

[bluesman86]

  On 12/04/2016 at 14:24, jjkusaf said:

Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to phrase this in Google ... so I failed at figuring it out on my own.  Here is my plan:

 

Currently I have Windows 7 on my desktop.  I plan on buying another Samsung Pro 512 (same SSD my Windows 7 is on).  I'm going to clone my Windows 7 install to that drive and upgrade it to Windows 10 and then disconnect the "old" Windows 7 drive.  After a month or so...once I'm confident that everything is good to go ... I'm going to reconnect and format the "old" Windows 7 drive which will leave me a clean SSD.

 

What I would like to do ... is use that drive to create a RAID 0 ... but without reinstalling Windows 10.  Soooo....my question is ... is this possible?

 

Samsung Pro 512 - Windows 10  --->

Samsung Pro 512 - blank 

-->

2x Samsung Pros in RAID 0 = Windows 10 (without reinstall)

 

Or would it be best to clone the Windows 7 drive to my older OCZ SSD (which is currently blank) ... install Windows 10 ... make sure it works ... create a RAID 0 out of the two Samsung drives and then clone the OCZ to the newly created RAID 0.

 

Does that make sense?

 

I'm not very familiar with working with RAID in Windows (only Linux/FreeBSD/non-OS drives in Windows).

Expand  

If I were you, I wouldn't bother, seriously.

 

SSDs don't benefit from RAID 0 in the same way as HDDs do. Things will get a faster, yes, but not by a huge notable margin. SSDs are already insanely fast (the Samsung Pro 512 already maxes out SATA III bandwidth). Synthetic tests will surely show benefits, but you probably won't even notice a real-world difference.

 

There are mostly downsides to it. The biggest one: you literally double the risk of data loss. If one drive fails, you're effed, and recovering data from a broken SSD is a lot harder (& expensive) than from a broken HDD.

 

Also a very big deal: It's impossible on many RAID controllers to get TRIM to work, especially on on-board RAID controllers. If you're lucky to have one that can make it work, you need to pull a bunch of tricks to make the command to through from the OS. If you don't know what that means, forget about it altogether. 

 

 

 

 

Moving up from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is the best performance boost you can give your system. It's an OS designed to optimize SSDs and multi-core CPUs and it just runs beautifully on modern hardware. Don't listen to the idiots here who are stuck in the past.

[Astra.Xtreme]

  On 12/04/2016 at 14:43, Open Minded said:

What happens if he wants more speed than a single SSD can offer? 

 

I have two SSDs in RAID 0 and it's great.  Who cares if it dies, I'm enjoying 1 GB/s transfer speeds.  I have everything I need backed up so it's no big deal if it dies.

 

 

Expand  

You get those fast transfers speeds between the two SSDs, but you'll still be bottlenecked when transferring to some other form of slower media.

 

I had two SSDs in RAID 0 for a while, and it was pretty much just a niche thing.  Besides benchmarks, it wasn't really good for anything.  I had the RAID array break a few times from updating firmware on the mobo and SSDs, which was sort of annoying.  In the end, it was just more economical to buy one large capacity SSD and simplify the entire system.  Less wiring, less configs, less risk, etc.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

  On 12/04/2016 at 15:09, bluesman86 said:

If I were you, I wouldn't bother, seriously.

 

SSDs don't benefit from RAID 0 in the same way as HDDs do. Things will get a little bit faster, yes, but not by a huge margin. SSDs are already insanely fast (the Samsung Pro 512 already maxes out SATA III bandwidth). Synthetic tests will surely show benefits, but you probably won't even notice a real-world difference.

 

There are mostly downsides to it. The biggest one: you literally double the risk of data loss. If one drive fails, you're effed, and recovering data from a broken SSD is a lot harder (& expensive) than from a broken HDD.

 

Also a very big deal: It's impossible on many RAID controllers to get TRIM to work, especially on on-board RAID controllers. If you're lucky to have one that can make it work, you need to pull a bunch of tricks to make the command to through from the OS. If you don't know what that means, forget about it altogether. 

 

 

 

 

Moving up from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is the best performance boost you can give your system. It's an OS designed to optimize SSDs and multi-core CPUs and it just runs beautifully on modern hardware. Don't listen to the idiots here who are stuck in the past.

Expand  

Thanks.  After looking at benchmarks across various tech sites (I should have done this prior to asking the question) ... I've decided to forgo the RAID 0 plan.  Aside from the synthetic benchmarks .... "real world" gains were minimal and probably not worth the potential "pain" as you and others have pointed out.

 

New plan.  Clone existing Win 7 Samsung SSD to the new Samsung SSD.  Disconnect "old" Samsung and upgrade the new Samsung to Windows 10.  After a few weeks ... ensuring everything works ... wipe the "old" Samsung and use it as a new storage/program destination.  

 

Thanks everyone...and sorry for wasting your time.    Mods...if you wish you can lock this thread.

[+JHBrown Subscriber¹]

  On 12/04/2016 at 15:09, bluesman86 said:

Moving up from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is the best performance boost you can give your system.

Expand  

I'm going to disagree with you, and this post has nothing to do with "bashing" Windows 10, as it is a fast OS. With that, I've ran Windows 7, and Windows 10, on the same Samsung 950 Pro SSD, and the performance difference is not there to the naked eye. Maybe on benchmarks Windows 10 is faster, however, the average Joe will not notice a huge speed bump, if any at all, on an already fast system. Lastly, moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is not the best performance boost you can give your system. That honor goes to many other hardware upgrades available out there. Again, Windows 10 is a fast OS, but I believe you are stretching it with the comment I quoted above.

[adrynalyne]

  On 12/04/2016 at 15:40, JHBrown said:

I'm going to disagree with you, and this post has nothing to do with "bashing" Windows 10, as it is a fast OS. With that, I've ran Windows 7, and Windows 10, on the same Samsung 950 Pro SSD, and the performance difference is not there to the naked eye. Maybe on benchmarks Windows 10 is faster, however, the average Joe will not notice a huge speed bump, if any at all, on an already fast system. Lastly, moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is not the best performance boost you can give your system. That honor goes to many other hardware upgrades available out there. Again, Windows 10 is a fast OS, but I believe you are stretching it with the comment I quoted above.

Expand  

I'm going to disagree with you. 

 

I moved my wife back to Windows 7 and her performance is notably slower than 10. 

[+JHBrown Subscriber¹]

  On 12/04/2016 at 16:25, adrynalyne said:

I'm going to disagree with you. 

 

I moved my wife back to Windows 7 and her performance is notably slower than 10. 

Expand  

What are her hardware specs. Noticed where I mentioned an already fast system? Here's what I run, and there is no speed difference between the two OS's:

 

• i7 5820K
• 32GB DDR4(8GB x 4)
• 512GB Samsung 950 Pro(OS)/1TB Samsung 850 Pro(Storage)
• GTX 980TI

On that system Windows 10 ran just as fast as Windows 7.

 

 

[Circaflex]

  On 12/04/2016 at 15:40, JHBrown said:

I'm going to disagree with you, and this post has nothing to do with "bashing" Windows 10, as it is a fast OS. With that, I've ran Windows 7, and Windows 10, on the same Samsung 950 Pro SSD, and the performance difference is not there to the naked eye. Maybe on benchmarks Windows 10 is faster, however, the average Joe will not notice a huge speed bump, if any at all, on an already fast system. Lastly, moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is not the best performance boost you can give your system. That honor goes to many other hardware upgrades available out there. Again, Windows 10 is a fast OS, but I believe you are stretching it with the comment I quoted above.

Expand  

Benchmarks say otherwise. 10 IS faster. 

[adrynalyne]

  On 12/04/2016 at 16:48, JHBrown said:

What are her hardware specs. Noticed where I mentioned an already fast system? Here's what I run, and there is no speed difference between the two OS's:

 

• i7 5820K
• 32GB DDR4(8GB x 4)
• 512GB Samsung 950 Pro(OS)/1TB Samsung 850 Pro(Storage)
• GTX 980TI

On that system Windows 10 ran just as fast as Windows 7.

 

 

Expand  

So what you are saying is, there is no performance difference because your hardware is recent? 

How about everyone else who does not have such recent hardware?

 

 

She has:

 

i7-2670QM

16GB DDR3

AMD something or another GPU

Samsung 840 Evo SSD

 

 

 

[+JHBrown Subscriber¹]

  On 12/04/2016 at 17:40, adrynalyne said:

So what you are saying is, there is no performance difference because your hardware is recent? 

How about everyone else who does not have such recent hardware?

Expand  

1. That's exactly what my original post said.

2. Buy new hardware

 

Please read my original post to @bluesman86. I was simply pointing out that an upgrade to Windows 10, is not the best performance boost you can give your system. We all know an SSD takes that honor, and depending on the rest of your system, you may not even notice a huge performance difference. Like in my case. I'm not into benchmark numbers as that other member pointed out above, I care out the speed I notice in day-to-day activities on my computer.

[adrynalyne]

  On 12/04/2016 at 17:54, JHBrown said:

1. That's exactly what my original post said.

2. Buy new hardware

 

Please read my original post to @bluesman86. I was simply pointing out that an upgrade to Windows 10, is not the best performance boost you can give your system. We all know an SSD takes that honor, and depending on the rest of your system, you may not even notice a huge speed difference. Like in my case. I'm not into benchmark numbers as that other member pointed out above, I care out the speed I notice in day-to-day activities on my computer.

Expand  

How much does hardware cost vs Windows 10 upgrade in regards to performance?

 

Think outside the box a little. He didn't say fastest. He said best.

 

Also, OP has an SSD.

[Circaflex]

  On 12/04/2016 at 17:54, JHBrown said:

1. That's exactly what my original post said.

2. Buy new hardware

 

Please read my original post to @bluesman86. I was simply pointing out that an upgrade to Windows 10, is not the best performance boost you can give your system. We all know an SSD takes that honor, and depending on the rest of your system, you may not even notice a huge speed difference. Like in my case. I'm not into benchmark numbers as that other member pointed out above, I care out the speed I notice in day-to-day activities on my computer.

Expand  

Well, then you are wrong. Numbers don't lie, 10 is faster whether you want to admit it or not. You might not see a huge difference, but there is a difference and numbers can back that up.

[+JHBrown Subscriber¹]

  On 12/04/2016 at 17:55, adrynalyne said:

How much does hardware cost vs Windows 10 upgrade in regards to performance?

 

Think outside the box a little. He didn't say fastest. He said best.

Expand  

Correct, he said best, however, an OS upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10, is not the best performance boost you can give a system. An $80 SSD is a better investment, versus a free upgrade to Windows 10. Of course that is my personal opinion @adrynalyne, and my different opportunity cost. If someone were to come to me for a performance issue on an older system, I would recommend hardware changes, versus upgrading to Windows 10.

[adrynalyne]

  On 12/04/2016 at 18:01, JHBrown said:

Correct, he said best, however, an OS upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10, is not the best performance boost you can give a system. An $80 SSD is a better investment, versus a free upgrade to Windows 10. Of course that is my personal opinion @adrynalyne, and my different opportunity cost. If someone were to come to me for a performance issue on an older system, I would recommend hardware changes, versus upgrading to Windows 10.

Expand  

Your point is moot, we already have SSDs in this case.

[+JHBrown Subscriber¹]

  On 12/04/2016 at 18:03, adrynalyne said:

Your point is moot, we already have SSDs in this case.

Expand  

Back to my original post, a change from Windows 7, to Windows 10, is not the best performance boost you can give your system.

[Open Minded]

  On 12/04/2016 at 15:02, jjkusaf said:

yea...I've thought about it ... but I've also thought about reinstalling all the programs/games  ... which would take a very long time.  I'll have to uninstall a few things just to get the Win7 install to fit onto the smaller OCZ drive.

 

yea...that is what I'm wanting to achieve ... more speed w/o having to invest in a new mobo with NVMe.   Great advice though by Tomo ... to ensure that data is backed up frequently just incase one SSD fails...such advice should be given to everyone regardless of how their system is setup.

 

So...my new plan ....

 

Clone the current Win7 Samsung to the OCZ.  Disconnect the Samsung and upgrade the OCZ to Windows 10.  After a few weeks...ensuring Windows 10 is working properly....create a RAID 0 with the two Samsungs.  Clone the OCZ drive w/ Windows 10 over to the newly created Samsung RAID 0.  Win?  Surely there is something I have to do prior to the cloning so that Windows 10 knows that it is now on a RAID?

Expand  

I've seen M.2 PCIe adapters, thought about one of them?  That would also make the data migration easier, in theory.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

  On 12/04/2016 at 21:10, Open Minded said:

I've seen M.2 PCIe adapters, thought about one of them?  That would also make the data migration easier, in theory.

Expand  

yea, the Z77 doesn't support booting from NVMe...though I've seen that you can mod the BIOS to do so.  However, I'm not willing to risk bricking the entire system in case I were to screw up.