The Worst Windows Feature - Chris Titus Tech
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Now Windows was a contender, and I did study its software RAID option vs Intel's fakeRAID setup for a Windows based NAS / Server.
However it's reputation and me knowing how crap most of the basic stuff that comes with Windows is (And why I see companies shell out for a lot of 3rd party software to do stuff better.) I couldn't find anyone that made me trust it.
I did a few test runs with ZFS and BSD as well, but I settled on a Linux box with mdadm to have something that was somewhat easy to maintain.
Throughout its career it has been great, it has been through a move / change of home, temperature issues, drive failures and it is still going!
But it is slated for an upgrade from its Core 2 (Yes, it is that old.) to more memory, and with that, an upgrade from mdadm to ZFS.
Date: 2022-03-21
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Comments and reviews: 8
Alan
Hi Chris, my biggest problem with windows 10 is amd graphics! I have gone full amd the last couple years and I always have problems with windows trying to install the amd display driver after I have the latest download from amd installed. I have an apu in one pc and the other has a vega 56 gpu. Windows update always wants to install graphics, at least lately they have the driver in the recommended download list. They got me again on both pc's, 21h2 upgrade installed amd drivers and made it so I can't use the amd software. So I had to use the reinstall from amd so I can use the software, and again both computers have a recommended driver download in windows update that are amd display drivers.....aaaahhhhhh!!!!!
Why does windows 10 have this problem??
1 pc is first gen threadripper 1950x and 2nd pc is am4 b550 ryzen 5 pro 4650 both are gigabyte aorus boards.
Help!
reply
Hi Chris, my biggest problem with windows 10 is amd graphics! I have gone full amd the last couple years and I always have problems with windows trying to install the amd display driver after I have the latest download from amd installed. I have an apu in one pc and the other has a vega 56 gpu. Windows update always wants to install graphics, at least lately they have the driver in the recommended download list. They got me again on both pc's, 21h2 upgrade installed amd drivers and made it so I can't use the amd software. So I had to use the reinstall from amd so I can use the software, and again both computers have a recommended driver download in windows update that are amd display drivers.....aaaahhhhhh!!!!!
Why does windows 10 have this problem??
1 pc is first gen threadripper 1950x and 2nd pc is am4 b550 ryzen 5 pro 4650 both are gigabyte aorus boards.
Help!
reply
LazyLoneLion
...showing posts from 7, 11, 14 years ago... And it was a good technology back then already -- because we don't see thousands of uses where there was no problem at all. Was it as good in Linux back then? Well, maybe -as good-. But hardly better. Especially on initial setup and troubleshooting+support side.
Still I wouldn't recommend software RAID-5 at all. RAID-1 (or RAID-0) is another thing, totally usable, but RAID-5 is kinda specific, so that if you need it you may be better with hardware RAID controller. Or maybe just use RAID-1 and buy more disks.
Not that I disagree on the main point -- maybe that really is the worst feature in Windows. And there are alternatives in Windows already for software RAID (Storage Space Direct anyone?). But can you still use it? Definitely. You just have to understand the risks.
reply
...showing posts from 7, 11, 14 years ago... And it was a good technology back then already -- because we don't see thousands of uses where there was no problem at all. Was it as good in Linux back then? Well, maybe -as good-. But hardly better. Especially on initial setup and troubleshooting+support side.
Still I wouldn't recommend software RAID-5 at all. RAID-1 (or RAID-0) is another thing, totally usable, but RAID-5 is kinda specific, so that if you need it you may be better with hardware RAID controller. Or maybe just use RAID-1 and buy more disks.
Not that I disagree on the main point -- maybe that really is the worst feature in Windows. And there are alternatives in Windows already for software RAID (Storage Space Direct anyone?). But can you still use it? Definitely. You just have to understand the risks.
reply
Kate_Vye
disk management... sucks even for normal users...
So many errors... without error codes... so hard to fix...
ugh.... I had so many problem with this... I will say it is frustrating because I wouldn't trust random other software to mess with my drives !!
But windows users... often have other software for that... and the popular ones are not... exactly better either. it can make other errors and just make everything worst as less knowledge is on the internet about third party software issues ESPECIALLY for harddrives and SSDs...
Right now im having a REALLY bad issue where a good kingston SSD which is secondary... just freeze my PC from time to time when it show some SLIGHT spikes on the task manager...
good luck for me finding infos about that.... theres non.
reply
disk management... sucks even for normal users...
So many errors... without error codes... so hard to fix...
ugh.... I had so many problem with this... I will say it is frustrating because I wouldn't trust random other software to mess with my drives !!
But windows users... often have other software for that... and the popular ones are not... exactly better either. it can make other errors and just make everything worst as less knowledge is on the internet about third party software issues ESPECIALLY for harddrives and SSDs...
Right now im having a REALLY bad issue where a good kingston SSD which is secondary... just freeze my PC from time to time when it show some SLIGHT spikes on the task manager...
good luck for me finding infos about that.... theres non.
reply
Ring_Zero
Software RAID may not be a good feature within Windows, however what a co-incidence that I lost a hardware RAID config from a HP Gen10 fully loaded server. All firmware was updated a month ago and all the client requested was a simple reboot. Spent lot of hours with HP, putting the OS mirrored hard drives into another server, back and forth and everything a tech would do, but there was absolutely no data on the drives.
Luckily, the server is a non-PROD so this did not cause major issues - Point is, hardware RAID is reliable although not 100% reliable.
Again, this issue was not due to ECC RAM as all our servers come with ECC RAM. Having good bare Metal backups is the only solution and proper documentation to restore it in a timely manner.
reply
Software RAID may not be a good feature within Windows, however what a co-incidence that I lost a hardware RAID config from a HP Gen10 fully loaded server. All firmware was updated a month ago and all the client requested was a simple reboot. Spent lot of hours with HP, putting the OS mirrored hard drives into another server, back and forth and everything a tech would do, but there was absolutely no data on the drives.
Luckily, the server is a non-PROD so this did not cause major issues - Point is, hardware RAID is reliable although not 100% reliable.
Again, this issue was not due to ECC RAM as all our servers come with ECC RAM. Having good bare Metal backups is the only solution and proper documentation to restore it in a timely manner.
reply
Katrina
My approach to software raid on Windows server is to install FreeBSD on a Hyper-V virtual machine, assign the drives directly to it, configure them as a zfs pool, and present it to the network as a Samba share. FreeBSD sees the actual drive models (Seagate/Western Digital/etc)and serial numbers etc. It is super-easy to move the disks to a new machine. Just do zpool import. Once you have done the physical move with the screwdrivers and stuff, and got it powered on past the POST stage, it takes me about 5 minutes to get a fully working samba server.
Have you tried ReFS recently? I tried it when it first came out and wasn't very impressed. I don't know if it as improved any.
reply
My approach to software raid on Windows server is to install FreeBSD on a Hyper-V virtual machine, assign the drives directly to it, configure them as a zfs pool, and present it to the network as a Samba share. FreeBSD sees the actual drive models (Seagate/Western Digital/etc)and serial numbers etc. It is super-easy to move the disks to a new machine. Just do zpool import. Once you have done the physical move with the screwdrivers and stuff, and got it powered on past the POST stage, it takes me about 5 minutes to get a fully working samba server.
Have you tried ReFS recently? I tried it when it first came out and wasn't very impressed. I don't know if it as improved any.
reply
potato
I actually have a RAID 0 array with two nvme drives using windows software raid. I have it set up as a games drive with anticipation that windows would crap the bed and i'd have to reinstall at some point. the array has survived 2 reinstalls of windows 10 and a migration to a fresh install to windows 11. I had to jump through a few hoops to get windows 11 to recognize the array but it moved over just fine and all of my games remain intact. Maybe windows just sucks at raid 5? either way its been a godsend in my use case not having to re download 300 gigs worth of games every time windows decides to crap it self. (I came at you, bro :))
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I actually have a RAID 0 array with two nvme drives using windows software raid. I have it set up as a games drive with anticipation that windows would crap the bed and i'd have to reinstall at some point. the array has survived 2 reinstalls of windows 10 and a migration to a fresh install to windows 11. I had to jump through a few hoops to get windows 11 to recognize the array but it moved over just fine and all of my games remain intact. Maybe windows just sucks at raid 5? either way its been a godsend in my use case not having to re download 300 gigs worth of games every time windows decides to crap it self. (I came at you, bro :))
reply
Greg
Yes please Windows, build me a stripe set... You'll make that mistake once. To be honest, I've run into issues with chip-set raid controllers about as often. I've only ever had one recover properly, and good luck moving them. I've also had some mixed luck with HBAs vs real hardware raid controllers. ZFS might be great, but I would advise using ECC for that as well unless you love corrupted disks or ZFS just randomly kicking them from the pool.
The bottom line here is always have a backup. RAID is not. Sometimes it is faster to recover than to rebuild an entire array if your backups are current.
reply
Yes please Windows, build me a stripe set... You'll make that mistake once. To be honest, I've run into issues with chip-set raid controllers about as often. I've only ever had one recover properly, and good luck moving them. I've also had some mixed luck with HBAs vs real hardware raid controllers. ZFS might be great, but I would advise using ECC for that as well unless you love corrupted disks or ZFS just randomly kicking them from the pool.
The bottom line here is always have a backup. RAID is not. Sometimes it is faster to recover than to rebuild an entire array if your backups are current.
reply
MpSniperM1911
because of that simple disk management program i wiped my xbox 360 hard drive, it hadn't any warn in the same style as linus's -do as i say-, it is just thanos snapped out of existence.
Also i couldn't use it anymore on the xbox because of some sort of -secure sector- which is unique to the hard drive and you can recover if you did the right thing which is to use FATexplorer (or any other program to do that), so i lost 300 gb of games and ability to use the hard drive in the xbox.
even linux don't give me a 180mm artillery bullet for me to shoot myself in the foot that way.
reply
because of that simple disk management program i wiped my xbox 360 hard drive, it hadn't any warn in the same style as linus's -do as i say-, it is just thanos snapped out of existence.
Also i couldn't use it anymore on the xbox because of some sort of -secure sector- which is unique to the hard drive and you can recover if you did the right thing which is to use FATexplorer (or any other program to do that), so i lost 300 gb of games and ability to use the hard drive in the xbox.
even linux don't give me a 180mm artillery bullet for me to shoot myself in the foot that way.
reply
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