Raid 0 life expectancy and how to access 2 disks from Raid 0 outside of original computer

Question

Two questions about Raid 0:

My situation:

My motherboard with RAID controller got sent in for an RMA (3 weeks turnaround). Asus sent me back a different motherboard that had way worse problems than my previous motherboard. So I have to send it in again to get repaired or replaced. So I am 3 out of 6 weeks through not having access to my Raid 0 2x1TB SSD Boot drive (Windows 10) that was dependent upon that motherboard and RAID controller. I'm getting desperate because my password database is on that raid drive as well as hundreds of GB of Steam games that I can't download again yet (data caps).

I have some computer hardware laying around, such as 'mediasonic HUR2-SU3 Sata-to-USB3 docking station' which I read thoughtlessly that it could recreate a RAID. Obviously it did not do so. It supposedly has something to do with Linux RAIDs, but I don't think it applies to me.

1. But I was wondering if in the modern world, there is any way to take my two 1 TB SSDs (Sata 3) (raid 0 from hardware controller) and have them both connected to one of my 2 laptops (Asus FX53VE or MacBook Pro E-2011) and somehow scrape coherent folders and data off of them. I don't want it destroyed or deleted, only accessed. With enough time and effort, there must be some way to do it.

   FYI: I only have 2 laptops at the moment**, so no RAID cards via PCIe (I do have one). This is because I just sent my motherboard back in to Asus for ANOTHER RMA.

2. I have a 4 disk QNAP NAS with 4 8TB WD RED NAS disks in it, in ** 0. What is the life expectancy of my data in RAID 0, assuming I check the SMART data and am on the lookout for signs of failure? The HDD is WD80EFZX.

Thanks a lot for reading! I have some more questions about Qubes OS and Linux installs, but I have more research to do before I ask them, and I know there is a different community for that.

Edit: I'm getting some nice new information from a different thread: Mount existing 2-HDD RAID 0 on a new machine that I could not find before.

Answer 1

RAID0 Life Expectancy

First off, the math for life expectancy of a RAID0 array is actually pretty straightforward. It's:

According to the spec sheet for your drives those drives have a life expectancy (MTBF) of 1,000,000 hours under ideal conditions. That translates to about 2 years in the real world. So, with 4 of those drives in a RAID0, you can expect a failure, on average, every 6 months.

Yes, with RAID0 the average life expectancy of the array halves every time the number of drives double. Never use RAID0 to store critical data. If you want a good balance of performance and reliability, look into RAID10... you'll need twice the drives for the same capacity but the reliability (of your data) is much higher.

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Transferability of RAID Arrays Between Computers

As to your second question. You need to understand that the link you gave is to an answer where they were able to "recover" the data on the raid array. And, having done this myself before using Active@'s line of software... the method described there is correct. But you need to understand that "recover" in this context means that he was able to gain access to the files and transfer them to another storage media entirely. It does not mean that he got the raid array working again on a different machine.

Generally getting a RAID array to work on a different machine involves a number of factors. The most important being: what is actually "RAIDing" your drives?

1. If it's software RAID using the features found in your operating system... then simply having the same operating system configured the same way and plugging the drives in should do it.
2. If you are using the motherboard's built-in RAID controller, then you are likely SOL. Unless your other system has the exact same raid controller the odds of getting the RAID array working again without first offloading the data, wiping the drives, and then recreating the array from scratch is very low.
3. If you are using a discrete RAID adapter (in the same sense as a discrete graphics adapter) then you have a relatively high chance of success if you also move the RAID controller card to the new computer. Since you are talking about a laptop it's almost certainly not this.

Beyond that, there are lots of little details that can unpredictably affect transferability of a RAID array. You should never assume that you will be able to make such a transfer even between matching hardware and software. Always backup critical data before attempting to do so.

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Additional Info

You should be aware that putting SSD drives in any RAID array, with the possible exception of software RAID using OS tools, removes the OSs ability to trim them. This may cause the SSDs to wear unevenly, leading to early failure. It's also noteworthy that newer versions of Intel's RAID controllers are able to trim SSDs themselves. YMMV.

Enterprise-grade hard drives have significantly increased lifespans. The Western Digital Gold series, for example, has an MTBF of 2,500,000 hours. This translates to roughly a 5-year real-world life expectancy. Enterprise drives also have significantly more redundancy and error correction features and have physically more robust mechanical components that can take significantly greater strain. Intel has actually done a whitepaper on the difference between desktop HDD and enterprise HDD.

Another thing to consider is that RAID1 still gives RAID0-like read performance... while providing nearly the same write performance as a single drive. And RAID10, while not providing the same write performance as RAID0, is still significantly faster when writing than a single drive... while being even faster than RAID0 at reads given equal capacity. You can use this RAID Performance Calculator to get an idea of the expected performance of different RAI types with different drives... actual milage may vary.