Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World
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What essentially all consumer motherboards do is include a software RAID driver that handles really low end RAID for them. It's a replacement to Microsoft's own RAID driver that is part of the OS. But I'd use the OS one over some random, scamming third party. FakeRAID, because its goal is to trick people, isn't known for producing good results. So it's normally just a demotion of the existing system.
To make it sound "cool" they pretend that the RAID is coming from hardware on the motherboard. This is easy to check, real hardware RAID needs a processor and RAM, and either a battery or expensive NVRAM for storage. You can see these on the motherboard and they would always be advertised in the specs. But no motherboard on the market have these parts or advertise these specs. Because they don't have RAID.
To further the illusion, they install the drivers as part of the standard motherboard driver pack. And they even put a "hook" into the BIOS of the motherboard to let you store the configuration file there so that it seems like you are managing hardware. But it's trivial to test, you can remove or disable the RAID driver, or load a different OS to run live, and see the disks independently. If the motherboard had RAID on it, this would be impossible, so it's a super easy test to verify the scam.
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All those New Egg lists that aren't Matrix, those are FakeRAID, too. Matrix is just one brand name. but they are showing that they know that FakeRAID is what that list is.
There aren't motherboards with RAID on the market. Maybe one or two, tops. Tops, if there are any. If you find one, it'll be insanely expensive and advertised up the wazoo about the hardware because it's super niche, and needs a specific audience that would only buy it knowing the specs.
It's like your grandparents saying "cloud". You know nothing that they use that term with has anything to do with cloud computing, it's just a word that they heard and think that it sounds cool to repeat. That's how motherboard makers use RAID. They know their customers think that it sounds cool, so they state it. It's become an accepted lie that they all do, and in IT we just have to know that universally, it's always a lie.
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I don't care about hardware RAID, software RAID, or fakeRAID.
My whole point with this since the beginning was that on a consumer motherboard, you can do RAID. You said they didn't, but they do. I don't know nt care about the means it uses to accomplish RAID, just that it does it on most motherboard out of the box.
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@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
I don't care about hardware RAID, software RAID, or fakeRAID.
My whole point with this since the beginning was that on a consumer motherboard, you can do RAID. You said they didn't, but they do. I don't know nt care about the means it uses to accomplish RAID, just that it does it on most motherboard out of the box.
But you DO care. You state you don't care, then state the opposite. You are saying the motherboard CAN do RAID, right after stating that you don't care if it can or not. The point here is that the motherboard cannot do RAID.
Saying that the motherboard does RAID, is stating that you care. You aren't saying that your system can do RAID, you are stating that the motherboard itself can. The discussion here is that it can't, but rather something other than the motherboard is doing it.
You can care or not care, but you can't state that you don't care while trying to show that you do. You are conflicted as to your statements. If you feel your motherboard, rather than your software, has RAID, then you are stating that you believe you have hardware RAID. It's just another way of saying the same thing.
Since all OSes do RAID, by your "I don't care" logic, all motherboards support OSes that do RAID. So pointing it out makes no sense. Pointing out that a motherboard can do RAID as a special feature only makes sense in the context of that being something in hardware different than what all motherboards can do by the nature of them running operating systems.
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@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
I don't know nt care about the means it uses to accomplish RAID, just that it does it on most motherboard out of the box.
This is the bit that is technically wrong. No motherboard on the market can do this. They don't do it out of the box, or do it at all.
What they do is convince you to do it separately, then convince you that they did it. It's not from the motherboard, nor out of the box. It's separate software that you install and manage.
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If I bought one of those motherboards from Newegg, I can do RAID1 for example via the motherboard. End of discussion. That's my point. You said it can't be done on 99% of motherboards, I said you can.
WTF are you going on about?
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@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
If I bought one of those motherboards from Newegg, I can do RAID1 for example via the motherboard. End of discussion.
Except you can't and didn't. Hardly end of discussion. You missed the point that they try to trick you into thinking exactly what you are thinking.
The motherboard didn't do a single freaking thing. You did it all by installing RAID software separately.
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@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
WTF are you going on about?
FakeRAID. And you claiming you magically avoided it. You jumped into a discussion where everyone understood FakeRAID and claim that something everyone knows about isn't real. But you don't explain why you think the industry is wrong or why everyone is confused, you simply repeat the exact misinformation that we have been talking about for decades, without ever once acknowledging that you are repeating the mistake and never clarifying why you believe to be the exception. You are stating the misinformation exactly as expected to be done by someone tricked by the Fake RAID.
Remember, you corrected us, not the other way around. I stated that motherboard RAID isn't real, it's a scam. You claimed to have secret information that it's not a scam, but are acting exactly the opposite.
So given what we know, and what you've had access to in this thread... you would know that nothing you are saying is in any way suggestive of the result you believe that you found. AND it was you, not me, that "corrected" something that was said.
So the question isn't what I'm on about, it's what are you on about? Why did you correct the statements about motherboards and FakeRAID if you are just going to point out that you got duped by FakeRAID and are ignoring it?
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@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
That's my point. You said it can't be done on 99% of motherboards, I said you can.
Yes, but I know why you are wrong. And I stated why it would be wrong before you said it. So before you made the claim, you had clear access to understand why what you were about to say would not mean anything.
I'm saying that your statement, and your examples, are showing exactly what was predicted. We said how it works, how they trick people, and how people perceive it. Then you did exactly the predicted things, and are ignoring all of what was actually said.
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Here is what it comes down to...
If you truly believe you found the one exception to the rule, and that truly weren't tricked by FakeRAID like everyone else... then state why. You've never stated any reason that would even hint that this might not be the case. If you have that secret information, why are you holding it back? And if you don't have that information, why do you feel you are the incredibly unlikely exception when you are describing the exact expected FakeRAID case?
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@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
If I bought one of those motherboards from Newegg, I can do RAID1 for example via the motherboard. End of discussion. That's my point. You said it can't be done on 99% of motherboards, I said you can.
WTF are you going on about?
This is FakeRAID, it's "RAID" that exist with that motherboard specifically. If you lost the motherboard, you'd have to buy the exact board, with the exact firmware and reinstall your drives, CPU and RAM to get your array back and working.
FakeRAID works exclusively within the OS, and has nothing to do with a raid management software like you'd see with hardware RAID or true Software RAID.
Software RAID works across any OS, Linux, Windows and (probably) MAC all include this. It's hardware agnostic and could in theory allow you to mount an array to recover data.
Hardware RAID is a separate card where your disks get connected too, and pre the OS boot phase you'd configure and manage your array.
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Configuring SoftwareRAID on Windows isn't FakeRAID, it's just a bad version of SoftwareRAID. . .
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@dustinb3403 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
Software RAID works across any OS, Linux, Windows and (probably) MAC all include this. It's hardware agnostic and could in theory allow you to mount an array to recover data.
This big thing to be careful of is drive swaps with software RAID. If you can't flag the drive to replace (especially dangerous with SAS Expanders, and JBODs where the numbering schemes sometimes start with 0 sometimes with 1).
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@storageninja said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@dustinb3403 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
Software RAID works across any OS, Linux, Windows and (probably) MAC all include this. It's hardware agnostic and could in theory allow you to mount an array to recover data.
This big thing to be careful of is drive swaps with software RAID. If you can't flag the drive to replace (especially dangerous with SAS Expanders, and JBODs where the numbering schemes sometimes start with 0 sometimes with 1).
Well yeah, but that is array management and numbering. You need to know which disk on screen is which disk physically in the box.
What a lot of SoftwareRAID (MD and MDADM) lacks is the identification of the disks, Synology does this but I'm sure it wasn't an easy feat.
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@dustinb3403 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
This is FakeRAID, it's "RAID" that exist with that motherboard specifically. If you lost the motherboard, you'd have to buy the exact board, with the exact firmware and reinstall your drives, CPU and RAM to get your array back and working.
That makes it sound like it is "on" the motherboard. It's important that it is not "on" the motherboard, but 100% in software. But that software checks to make sure, in most cases, that you also have a matching motherboard. It's a crippling, a penalty, not a feature. It's less, not more.
OS Software RAID would work with any motherboard or hardware. FakeRAID can, but most does not.
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@dustinb3403 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
Configuring SoftwareRAID on Windows isn't FakeRAID, it's just a bad version of SoftwareRAID. . .
Correct. But important to remember that Windows software RAID is still better than any FakeRAID.
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@storageninja said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@dustinb3403 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
Software RAID works across any OS, Linux, Windows and (probably) MAC all include this. It's hardware agnostic and could in theory allow you to mount an array to recover data.
This big thing to be careful of is drive swaps with software RAID. If you can't flag the drive to replace (especially dangerous with SAS Expanders, and JBODs where the numbering schemes sometimes start with 0 sometimes with 1).
Sometimes you can. All depends on the system that you have.
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@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
If I bought one of those motherboards from Newegg, I can do RAID1 for example via the motherboard. End of discussion.
Except you can't and didn't. Hardly end of discussion. You missed the point that they try to trick you into thinking exactly what you are thinking.
The motherboard didn't do a single freaking thing. You did it all by installing RAID software separately.
Yes, it is end of discussion... What I am getting is RAID, fakeRAID or not, it's still RAID. My disks are redundant, that's the point. And I'm getting it via the Motherboard.
In an actual example I lived through, I had two hard drives, in a RAID1. One drive died, and everything still worked. Therefore, I had the inexpensive disks, and there were in a redundant array, hence RAID.
So yes, I had a regular motherboard (one of the thousands (with RAID) in the earlier Newegg screenshot), and yes, it did a RAID. I used RAID1, but it also did 0, 5, and 10.
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@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
Except you can't and didn't. Hardly end of discussion. You missed the point that they try to trick you into thinking exactly what you are
When you setup this system, did you setup the array from within Windows or from within an array management utility?
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@dustinb3403 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
Except you can't and didn't. Hardly end of discussion. You missed the point that they try to trick you into thinking exactly what you are
When you setup this system, did you setup the array from within Windows or from within an array management utility?
I said it's built in to the motherboard, this whole thing is about doing RAID from 99% of the consumer motherboards out there. So obvously not from within Windows, but using the motherboard utility after POST, before the OS loads. I think CTRL+R or I or someithing while its booting, it's been awhile.
