Will my Windows Backup work when I go from RAID to standard AHCI?

[Mr Davo]

Hi Everyone,

I am using Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, and to protect my data I have performed a backup using the Control Panel > Backup and Restore feature (Back up your programs, system settings, and files - Windows Help).

My backup consist of a System Image of both the operating system itself, and my files.

Currently my computer uses a RAID0 array which consists of 2 x Samsung Solid State Drives, initial results from the array were very impressive.



Today (a couple of weeks short of two years later) the results of the same test are still very impressive, though admittedly there are not longer any results which exceed 1 Gigabit / second!



However despite the 'mighty' results above I am starting to have some doubts about the integrity of the array.

With regard to my backup (which resides on a separate hard drive) I am specifically wondering if I can restore the Windows Backup to a none RAID drive and expect my computer to work?

Any advice here will be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Davo

[parsec]

Re: Will my Windows Backup work when I go from RAID to standard AHCI?

Of course you can restore your backup to a non-RAID volume/drive.

The source of the backup and a future destination of the backup are completely independent of each other. Once the data was read from the source, it is no different than any other SATA source. There is no format or configuration of your data (OS files or whatever) that is tied to the device it was stored on. The Windows file system requires data to be in a specific format regardless of the source, and has no idea what the physical format of the source is.

You could restore your OS backup to a PATA HDD operating at ATA 133 speed (if you board supported that), which is quite different than your RAID 0 array of SSDs.

The deterioration of your RAID 0 array's performance could be caused by several things, and since I have no idea what board you use, or any information about the RAID 0 array itself, some of the possibilities may not apply.

[Mr Davo]

More details concerning my RAID0 array

Hello parsec,

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Below I have taken the liberty of uploading a picture of my RAID0 array's setup. Can you think of anything that might cause the array to deteriorate given the information that I have just provided?



Any further assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Davo

[parsec]

Re: More details concerning my RAID0 array

Hello parsec,

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Below I have taken the liberty of uploading a picture of my RAID0 array's setup. Can you think of anything that might cause the array to deteriorate given the information that I have just provided?



Any further assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Davo

Sigh... still no information on what mother board you're using. But I can see you have an X79 board and are using the Intel RSTe RAID driver, which is one critical clue. Otherwise nothing else has any relationship to performance degradation of SSDs in a RAID array.

Are you familiar with TRIM "commands" and SSDs? Without TRIM support a SSD's performance will deteriorate over time.

Next, RAID did not have TRIM support until about two years ago now, and that was only for RAID 0 with certain Intel chipsets and version 11 Intel IRST RAID drivers.

Without double checking, I'm not 100% sure if the X79 platform supports TRIM in RAID 0, or what RSTe driver version is required if it does support RAID 0 TRIM. If I recall correctly, RSTe does not support TRIM for SSDs in RAID arrays.

That is why many X79 boards have BIOS updates that allow the use of the Intel IRST driver. That could be checked if we knew what board you have...

So, going by the one clue I see in your screen shot, you most likely have had no TRIM support on your PC, and your SSDs have received no TRIM commands in almost two years. Could that explain the reduction in benchmark results? Yes.

I could ask you many other questions related to the SSDs, but as you cannot answer one of mine...

[Mr Davo]

Re: Will my Windows Backup work when I go from RAID to standard AHCI?

Hi parsec,

Thanks for your continued interest in my post. I have examined my motherboard, and it is a Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4. Furthermore below you will find a photo of my BIOS screen, as you can see the BIOS is version F3p (dated 16/11/2012).



I do remember considering updating my BIOS at one stage, however after a quick Google I was put off because another user of the same motherboard stated at the time that 'his RAID was broken' due to the upgrade.

Can you tell me whether my RAID supports TRIM, and if not what (if anything) I can do about the issue?

Kind Regards,

Davo