Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World
-
How a Typical FakeRAID Install Happens
Motherboard Purchase
Someone purchases a motherboard (or RAID card) that claims to provide RAID. They install the mobo, CPU, RAM, and other components, hook up drives, turn on the computer.
First Boot - BIOS
On first boot, if RAID is desired, the new owner goes into the BIOS to configure the PC. This is a normal BIOS like any other. A BIOS is just a little ROM chip and tiny bit of configuration storage. It contains only enough to boot the system to a disk, nothing more. It's trivially small, it is only a few KB of storage, it contains no software that can be loaded later, it has no hooks into the OS (UEFI is different, but BIOS can't do these things), at most it can contain a small text file of configuration data. Often a special key sequence is used to get to the "RAID Configuration" portion of the BIOS, sometimes not. but it's always the same simple BIOS stuff.
The RAID configuration information is put into the BIOS and saved. There is no RAID at this point, just a config file.
OS Install
Now an OS needs to be installed. The OS, normally Windows, is installed. The drivers for most FakeRAID is included in the stock Windows (and Linux) system images, so typically you will be presented with the drives as if they were already RAIDed, as part of the included Windows driver.
This is not always the case and used to be rare, traditionally you'd have to provide an installer disk to handle this or else the FakeRAID would never load. But this has been eased by FakeRAID drivers being built into all major OS distributions as third party included driver slugs to simplify things for end users who were often confused when the RAID wasn't working as expected.
Driver Install
The OS installs and both Windows and most Linux variants go out and automatically load the necessary drivers, management tools, updates, etc. This is where the RAID driver really comes from, this automated process. It's just another hardware driver.
Usage
To the end user, the RAID was "magic", it appears to have been configured by, and maybe even provided by, the motherboard. But it is not. If you remove the driver from Windows or Linux, you will see the driver independently - there is no RAID from the motherboard. It's all in the OS, or on top of the OS.
The software for the driver can not come from the motherboard in BIOS days, if while a UEFI can provide drivers, this is no different than getting it from any "add on" storage space. It's simply a viable install storage location, a tiny SSD. To run, the driver must load into the OS and run like any normal software.
In this way, FakeRAID looks just like hardware RAID, but is actually just software RAID masquerading. No amount of motherboard labeling, BIOS menus, motherboard storage, motherboard requirements, or other artefacts suggest that the RAID itself is coming from the motherboard or any piece of hardware. It only suggests that there is some labeling, a simple text editing utility, and a licensing dongle possibly associated with the motherboard. That the RAID comes from hardware is not implied by any of those things. But most people believe that they must imply that, giving FakeRAID its power to convince people.
At the end of the day, the RAID comes from a normal software driver, normally included in the OS and/or downloaded as part of the normal driver installs during installation, it runs in system RAM, runs on the CPU, and has no connection to the motherboard other than optionally looking to the motherboard to pick up the configuration file from the publicly readable BIOS space (the OS can always read the BIOS for information.)
-
@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
You simply hook up the motherboard, then on first boot, hit CTRL+R (for example), then you can configure the RAID.
Sure, configure it. That's a text file that the software RAID reads later. You don't think that configuring the text file is the same as running the RAID, right? I just discussed that above with the Notepad example and Skyrim.
You keep saying things like this as if they show that the motherboard is providing the RAID. Do you really not see how that is not at all what you are describing?
I've always got the concept of it, I'm not ever debating that part.
I'm saying that when I buy a typical motherboard, I am able to create a RAID without installing anything except the motherboard hardware itself. I set up and configure the RAID via the RAID BIOS. Then I can install any OS onto the RAID, or present the RAID as storage to the OS running on another disk, or have the RAID available to something I boot to.
That it's fakeRAID, and only storing config settings in the BIOS for software to use later is irrelevant. My whole point originally and this ENTIRE TIME, was that when you buy a motherboard, it's got the RAID stuff built in and ready to go, nothing else needed.
-
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
I'm saying that when I buy a typical motherboard, I am able to create a RAID without installing anything except the motherboard hardware itself. I set up and configure the RAID via the RAID BIOS. Then I can install any OS onto the RAID, or present the RAID as storage to the OS running on another disk, or have the RAID available to something I boot to.
Right, I understand that you are saying this. And I'm explaining that while it can look like this, it's not true. The RAID doesn't exist, at all, until you have installed the operating system and the RAID software. Only then is there RAID, and it is something I've proven for people on their hardware over and over again.
This is the entire purpose of FakeRAID, to make it seem like this is what is happening. If it didn't, it wouldn't trick anyone. It's very convincing. They've take every casual avenue of investigation and made it all seem the same as if there actually was some hardware involved.
The magic is all in the automatic installation of the RAID software as part of the OS install. Since the RAID is added on, by you, transparently without you really knowing, it seems like it must have been there earlier, when there was just a motherboard. But the motherboard has nowhere to store that software, and no RAID controller to run it on, and a BIOS can't provide software to the OS. So it has to be in software, it just doesn't seem like it because they always show you something that makes it seem like hardware.
But install Linux on there and remove the Windows abstractions, and you can always see "through" the RAID, proving the RAID is above, not below, the OS.
-
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
That it's fakeRAID, and only storing config settings in the BIOS for software to use later is irrelevant. My whole point originally and this ENTIRE TIME, was that when you buy a motherboard, it's got the RAID stuff built in and ready to go, nothing else needed.
But it IS relevant. If your point is that the motherboard has RAID stuff built in, then that it doesn't have it built in must be pretty relevant. The RAID itself is not on the motherboard, anywhere. There is nowhere for it to be. Where do you think the motherboard would store it or run it? The mobo has no capacity for that.
-
The drivers you mention needing to install pre-installation (which are now included in most OS's) would be supplemental packs that you would install.
-
Something that used to catch people offguard with FakeRAID...
They'd start with a Windows system or something that had the RAID software on it. They'd use their box for a while. Then one day they'd install a different OS, one that doesn't include the driver, and suddenly their Windows data, and their RAID, is all gone. Just... poof.
Hardware RAID, even if coming from a motherboard, would still have the data there because it doesn't depend on the OS for the RAID. Download something like Dragonfly that doesn't include FakeRAID drivers and file up a LiveCD or whatever. The RAID won't be there, proving the motherboard, or any hardware, isn't providing it. The only thing removed is the OS that was doing it.
-
@dustinb3403 said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
The drivers you mention needing to install pre-installation (which are now included in most OS's) would be supplemental packs that you would install.
Right. Used to be required all the time. Now they are rarely needed. Nearly all FakeRAID vendors, especially the big mobos and Intel, have moved to standard, signed drivers that Microsoft bakes in for them. It's tiny code, so not a big deal in the grand scheme of the OS storage. Fedora, Ubuntu, all do the same thing.
-
Not long ago, almost no Linux included FakeRAID drivers. But as Linux use on consumer equipment got more popular, people wanted it for whatever reason. So they started including them. I think this was likely sponsored by the FakeRAID vendors because they wanted to make it less casual to accidentally prove that the system had no RAID on it like they'd been led to believe when they paid extra for the motherboard.
-
And what lets you do this by default out of the box. What's the enabler? Is it the power supply you are configuring? No, it's the motherboard. This is all about the motherboard doing this. This is what I mean by coming with RAID. THe means, the how, fakeraid/software/hardware whatever... makgin a config somewhere for software raid and drivers to pick up later after the OS is loaded, all irrelevant for my original point and the point i've been makign this whole time.
-
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
And what lets you do this by default out of the box. What's the enabler?
The OS, as I delved into above.
-
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
No, it's the motherboard. This is all about the motherboard doing this.
Beaten to death. The motherboard is not doing this. Why would you think that it is? How do you think that that is even possible?
The motherboard, of all things, is not the enabler of FakeRAID. It's the mobo manufacturer in this example making it fake, but it's not the motherboard providing any functionality.
-
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
This is all about the motherboard doing this. This is what I mean by coming with RAID.
Exactly, I understand that. And like I said, it's that the motherboard ISN'T doing this, is why I say it does NOT come with RAID.
Read my example of how it works. The RAID is, and always was, in the OS. It's provided by the OS installer, it doesn't exist without the OS installer. But it CAN exist without the motherboard.
-
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
THe means, the how, fakeraid/software/hardware whatever... makgin a config somewhere for software raid and drivers to pick up later after the OS is loaded, all irrelevant for my original point and the point i've been makign this whole time.
We've covered this too. You can't state that your point is that it is hardware, then claim that it being hardware doesnt' matter. You can't have it both ways. The discussion is that we had said it was FakeRAID (not FROM the mobo), and you claimed it was hardware RAID (FROM the mobo.) That's the whole point. Anytime you say that this doesn't matter, conflicts with what you say the point is.
Bottom line, motherboard does not create, maintain, provide, or power the RAID. The RAID isn't part of the motherboard. The RAID exists with or without the motherboard. The RAID comes from the OS and / or third party drivers installed onto the OS. That installer is not from the motherboard.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
No, it's the motherboard. This is all about the motherboard doing this.
Beaten to death. The motherboard is not doing this. Why would you think that it is? How do you think that that is even possible?
The motherboard, of all things, is not the enabler of FakeRAID. It's the mobo manufacturer in this example making it fake, but it's not the motherboard providing any functionality.
If you got a motherboard that didn't "come with RAID", you'd have to either install hardware, software, or both to make a RAID. Regardless if the OS you use has the drivers/software built in, it won't do anything, because the motherboard doesn't have it in there to configure.
Now, if you buy a motherboard that does have RAID built-in, then you don't have to do anything other than have or install a regular OS.
In the case the motherboard didn't come with RAID built-in, well, then as i said above, you need add a RAID card, or do extra stuff to create a software RAID, like configure Windows software RAID. But when the motherboard has it built-in, you don't have to do anything.
-
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
No, it's the motherboard. This is all about the motherboard doing this.
Beaten to death. The motherboard is not doing this. Why would you think that it is? How do you think that that is even possible?
The motherboard, of all things, is not the enabler of FakeRAID. It's the mobo manufacturer in this example making it fake, but it's not the motherboard providing any functionality.
If you got a motherboard that didn't "come with RAID", you'd have to either install hardware, software, or both to make a RAID.
Right, and I covered this ad nauseum. You DO have to install it to make a RAID and you do, every time. Are you telling me you didn't install an OS? If you installed an OS, then you installed the RAID software.
-
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
Regardless if the OS you use has the drivers/software built in, it won't do anything, because the motherboard doesn't have it in there to configure.
Incorrect, most of us do this all the time. Normal RAID has no such limitations. @WrCombs just did this in the other thread, in fact, while we were having this discussion.
-
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
In the case the motherboard didn't come with RAID built-in, well, then as i said above, you need add a RAID card, or do extra stuff to create a software RAID, like configure Windows software RAID. But when the motherboard has it built-in, you don't have to do anything.
In both cases you have to configure it and install the OS containing the software. The motherboard doesn't simplify the process. At best, you are arguing that you like one particular software RAID's menu better than another's. That's not really relevant.
In both cases you have to configure the RAID, and install the software. They are, quite identical. Except one tries to trick you into thinking your hardware is doing part of the work, and the other is honest. That's about it.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
Regardless if the OS you use has the drivers/software built in, it won't do anything, because the motherboard doesn't have it in there to configure.
Incorrect, most of us do this all the time. Normal RAID has no such limitations. @WrCombs just did this in the other thread, in fact, while we were having this discussion.
You took this out of context.
However, when in context, you'll agree that simply installing an OS does not give you RAID. That was the point there. You'd need to set up a RAID first, whether via hardware raid, software, or whatever. Don't take thigns out of context like that.
-
Many enterprise software RAID systems also do RAID without any work, out of the box. In fact, one could argue that most FakeRAID takes MORE work, and provides less than many normal software RAID systems.
Windows software RAID is clunky and confusing, and handled late in the process. That's unfortunate. But you can't use that one bad software RAID example to determine "how software RAID works." Take a Synology box, that will do RAID with far less configuration than any FakeRAID system I've seen.
FakeRAID could do a totally transparent install, too, if it wanted. Any software RAID could. It's not that one is easier than the other, it's that both are just the same thing. Both are software RAID. Neither has an advantage at the code level.
It's just the one is promoted unethically as a scam, and the other is up front and honest.
-
@obsolesce said in Discovering FakeRAID in the Real World:
However, when in context, you'll agree that simply installing an OS does not give you RAID. That was the point there. You'd need to set up a RAID first, whether via hardware raid, software, or whatever. Don't take thigns out of context like that.
I had already written something up that disagreed with this.
In both cases, you have to set up the RAID equally. The motherboard doesn't make things easier here.
Both cases you configure, both cases you install. In both cases, the installation is typically done as part of the OS install and totally transparent. Both optionally require manual acquisition and installation.
But some software RAID, like common in a NAS, does not require that and does it all automatically. So even the configuration piece is not always required. That's simply a choice of the implementer.
