(no subject)

[arethinn]

I've been considering taking the plunge and letting my Windows 7 (64 bit Ultimate) computer upgrade itself to Windows 10. However, I currently have a RAID set up to entirely mirror the contents of one drive to another identical drive. This is a software RAID using Windows' internal management tool, not a hardware controller. One of the two disks is the boot disk (i.e., I don't have the OS housed on a third separate disk).

I've tried to do some Googling about what is best practice in this situation but am not coming up with much, other than disquieting suggestions that Windows 10 is broken with RAIDS (things like the OS not being able to see RAIDed disks after moving from 7 or 8 to 10, etc.). Apparently later versions of Windows are using something called "Storage Spaces" to accomplish similar effects. That's a village I may have to pillage when I get there.

I feel intuitively that what I ought to do is first un-RAID the two drives (stop mirroring) before attempting to muck about with the OS. (I assume that would in turn mean at least having to rebuild the mirror afterwards, possibly even having to reformat the second drive first. And paranoia tells me I ought to first back up everything valuable on a third external drive or something as well.) But I can't find anyone directly instructing to do so. Advice?

Comments

[zeeth_kyrah]

I'd say, this being a major change, get a separate backup anyway, then un-RAID the drives temporarily. This is supposed to be downgradable, but I keep hearing of people who tried to go back and had severe problems. And some software, particularly games, isn't compatible.

[arethinn]

I don't think it's too likely I'd be trying to go back, more like suck it up and move forward, so I'm mostly concerned with not breaking things irrevocably in the process of install; but yeah. enotsola has been using it for a while so I can see that it's at least mostly functional for my daily needs. I don't have much in the way of games - mostly Steam/GOG and a few other things I run through DOSBox (although that could be an adventure). I'm sure it might break some of the older stuff I still use (I hear Winamp doesn't play nice anymore). I am sort of concerned about Office 2010 and Adobe CS3, though.

[caraven]

Not much to offer, but I can say that Office 2010 works fine for me under 10.

[arethinn]

Good to know.

[andros_b]

Wait, Windows is the RAID manager? Wacky. I wouldn't let Windows manage a lemonade stand, but that's me. In any case, my suggestion is this:

1. Back up the whole drive.


2. UnRAID the disks in Windows 7.


3. If you can, rebuild the RAID on the BIOS level. Many motherboards have software RAID built in, if not an actual hardware RAID controller.


4. Perform the upgrade.

I'll probably take the plunge in a month or two.

[arethinn]

I'm using Windows' Disk Management precisely because we couldn't get the RAID to work through BIOS, so that's a no go. I forget exactly what the problem was, as this was over 3 years ago now we originally built the computer, but there was some actual reason we didn't do it that way.

[andros_b]

Ah, OK. In that case, if you can, I'd invest in a RAID controller card and set up the RAID set that way.

[arethinn]

I dunno if I have a slot. I'm probably going to go back to having Windows manage the RAID (or whatever it's called under Win 10 - apparently this "Storage Spaces" thing is a move away from old-fashioned RAID?) afterwards; I was mainly trying to confirm it would be a good idea to un-mirror the drives before I tried to proceed with OS upgrade.

[andros_b]

Fair enough. Chances are I'm being overly paranoid anyway. :P

[brewingtrouble.livejournal.com]

If you do it, be wary.

My current setup cannot handle windows 10 but I had already accidentally installed some of the updates that laid the groundwork and now I'm struggling hard to stop it from forcibly updating my computer (It tries about every 2 days... locks up all my memory, then crashes the computer hard).

W10 actually has bricked some folks' machines, and M$ don't care and won't offer any compensation for their FORCED updates doing so. They also installed a bunch of tracking stuff with some of those W10 groundwork updates, so they're watching what you're doing in some capacity. No guarantee it'll stop watching you once 10 is installed, either.

Honestly, Windows is behaving a lot more like a virus than an OS at this point so when I get my new computer parts, I'm putting 7 back on it and will not be installing any of the W10 updates at all, just on principle. They can go hang IMHO.

[dreamfall.livejournal.com]

I upgraded from 7, and I've not had a particularly difficult time with W10, with one caveat: It positively hates Nvidia graphics card drivers. From all that I can tell in googling the issue and searching various forums, it's a known issue that neither Microsoft or Nvidia seems especially willing to address. The manifestation of this particular lovefest is lots of bluescreens with memory management or IRQ errors in the video drivers. You can cut way down on the frequency of them by disabling the automatic driver updates and only letting it update it's own core files, but if you do stuff that requires a lot of vid memory you'll still run into it a bit.

It's not off the chain horrible. I can go a week or two without an issue, then spend a weekend playing ESO a lot and have it happen 5 times over the course of a weekend.

My understanding is also that it's not particularly tolerant of older hardware, but none of mine is especially old so I haven't had too much trouble.

OTOH, my husband upgraded from 8 and likes it MUCH better, so for what that's worth.

[arethinn]

enotsola has been using it for a while (in a dual boot system with Win 7 for when he needs it), and hasn't hated it. That's really why I'm even considering it at all; I wouldn't do it sight unseen. My main concern was getting advice about handling the existing RAID although I do also wonder how well previously installed software will cope (especially things like Office 2010 and Adobe CS3). I'm running the onboard video on my AMD-based motherboard so I'll have to see whose name is on that. eta: Apparently AMD does their own. I was misremembering that they had bought NVidia (it was ATI they bought).