oh DRM..Im pulling my hair... please help, The horror of reinstalling Windows 8

[zed]

Installing and using linux is braindead easy, it's easier than windows

yes that was last experience as well
insstalling xp vs ubuntu X (ok xp's old but was the newest disc I had)
ubuntu just worked (TM), xp I had to get everything installed myself, usb, webcam (which never worked logitech support gave up in the end after 20 emails), gfx card, directx version etc

im talking about this

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/03/26/us-microsoft-eu-idUKBRE92P0E120130326

I have win8 installed on this laptop, no disc etc. Im wondering how easy it is. If I had more time Ild look into it myself, just wondered about other ppls experiences

 

[Mize]

Ubuntu Secure Remix installs fine on uefi/secure bios machines. I have it dual booting with w8 on my new Asus g46vw. Only downside is remix doesn't have fake raid drivers installed by default if you want to use chipset fake raid.

 

[Davros]

why would you want fake raid ?
whats wrong with real raid ?

 

[Mize]

why would you want fake raid ?
whats wrong with real raid ?

Fake raid is a bit faster than software raid but much slower than dedicated controller raid. If you've ever used motherboard "hardware" raid then you've used fake raid.

But to answer your question, lots of people use it because a good raid card esta muy expensivo.

 

[Davros]

why is it called fake raid whats fake about it ?

 

[Malo]

Onboard RAID doesn't usually compare to the features of a good RAID card. However a good RAID card is usually considerably more expensive than an entire motherboard with RAID.

 

[BRiT]

why is it called fake raid whats fake about it ?

It's fake raid because none of the processing is done by the "raid card" but they have the raid pool setup in their BIOS; the real processing is still done by software.

 

[Davros]

surely the processing is done by the raid chip on the board (as it doesnt use drivers, its configured by jumpers) if not whats the point of the chip ?

Users of the SiI 4723 eliminate CPU loading by using the embedded RISC SteelVine
storage processor.

 

[Mize]

why is it called fake raid whats fake about it ?

I believe it's basically because it's software raid done in firmware without a dedicated controller, without battery backup of buffers, etc. There's a reason a good hardware raid card costs > $1k and a reason the ones you see for $200 are so much slower and offer much less data integrity. Fake raid is also often called host raid.

 

[Sxotty]

I believe the major issue here is Asus. They are required to provide a means of installing windows 8 again. Either they provide a reinstall DVD/USB with the laptop, a program with the laptop to create recovery DVD's, or they have a partition on the hard drive allowing you to do a factory reset back to fresh install.

Likely in this situation it was the last option (or you didn't create recovery DVD's) and when they replaced the hard drive they failed to provide one with a fresh install or a recovery partition thus you were not able to install windows 8 on your laptop.

Asus was the failure here, nothing to do with MS.

I agree with this Asus was fubaring it. I am still tired of DRM though. I just went through some of my own hassle due to DRM on bluray...

 

[Mize]

surely the processing is done by the raid chip on the board (as it doesnt use drivers, its configured by jumpers) if not whats the point of the chip ?

No, this is not true. Fake RAID does require drivers and there is no "RAID chip" on the motherboard.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

why is it called fake raid whats fake about it ?

That's just techno-snobbery, because chipset RAID is a step above software RAID, but nowhere near as good as a proper hardware RAID controller

"Proper" RAID uses a raid controller. It's got things like it's own processors to do checksumming and parity, and all sorts of other tricky things, like battery backup on the controller so you don't lose data if you get a crash or power outage, and read/write caches.

Software RAID is the other end of the spectrum, where your CPU does everything. You can set it up in Windows or any of the Linux desktops.

Inbetween is chipset RAID (what others are calling "fake RAID"). This is where there is partial hardware support in chipsets/CPU. Intel do this as Rapid Storage Technology, (AMD have their own version), that allows you to do things like have a striped volume as a boot device, 0+1 arrays, or use a SSD as a cache device for a disk array. Things that are not so easily done in pure software RAID, or that would require an expensive hardware RAID controller.

Chipset RAID is actually pretty good for the average home user if you want to use arrays, especially if you only want 0 or 1 in smallish arrays. Obviously it's not as good as hardware RAID, but it's pretty much free with your motherboard, and more flexible and extensive than software RAID.

If you're going to need high speed, high availability multiple RAID clusters with hot spares, then you're better off looking at costly hardware controllers. If you're a home or enthusiast user that wants more than a basic stick-everything-on-one-C-drive setup, then chipset RAID is probably more than adequate. With the spare power of today's CPUs and motherboards, it's actually not bad, and has come a long way in the last five years.

 

[Davros]

No, this is not true. Fake RAID does require drivers and there is no "RAID chip" on the motherboard.

So Does this make mine real raid ?

 

[Mize]

So Does this make mine real raid ?

Is it an ASIC or a processor?

 

[Davros]

I ninja edited a picture of it above
Its called the steelvine risc storage processor

System Features
• Works without GUI (LEDs and Jumpers)
• Works without driver or agent running
• Works without BIOS updates
• 0% host CPU loading during rebuild

This storage processor completely frees up
the main CPU and provides the enhanced RAID mode completely from hardware

 

[orangpelupa]

wow the topic evolved into something more technical

btw here the steps i take to make ASUS accept Windows 8 resintall with wrong ISO (not OEM iso)

Download en_windows_8_x64_dvd_915440.iso
Download Core SingleLanguage Patch

Apply the patch to make Core SingleLaguage ISO.

Boot to Windows 8 ISO. Choose CoreSIngleLanguage.
Install Windows 8 as usual.
Windows 8 Will ask you for a key. Skip it.

Download This app to extract KEY from UEFI.
Run the app and open key.txt.
Now you have your OEM Windows 8 Core SingleLanguage KEY.

Go to the start menu.
Type "cmd".
Right Click it and choose "Run as Admin"

Type slmgr.vbs /rilc
Press OK or ENTER on the new window that appears.

Type slmgr.vbs /ipk KEY

Go to Start, type "Activate".
Press "Setting". The 1st result should be about activating windows.
Click it and Windows will tell you to restart the laptop.

After restart Windows 8 will be activated.
(i dont know it need internet or not, when restarted the laptop already auto connect to WiFi)

 

[Gubbi]

I believe it's basically because it's software raid done in firmware without a dedicated controller, without battery backup of buffers, etc. There's a reason a good hardware raid card costs > $1k and a reason the ones you see for $200 are so much slower and offer much less data integrity. Fake raid is also often called host raid.

Host raid is a better term than fake raid There is nothing fake about it, data is distributed across disks just like a real raid solution.

Hardware raid is another dying piece of silicon. What's the point of offloading raid processing when it takes up less than 5% of one core in your quad core CPU which spends most of its time idling anyway?

I prefer software raid to hardware raid anytime, but that's more a question of ease of maintenance (no need to find administration software for decades old controllers, no need to worry about getting said software to work on newest version of OS, no need to worry about your boutique controller being a single point of failure).

If you worry about data integrity, disable write caching on your disks and use a journalled filesystem, then you're 95% there.

Cheers

 

[Malo]

I've been investigating cheaper RAID solutions as I am looking at moving to WHS 2011 from my WHSv1 box. Planning on using an older C2D mboard/cpu left over from upgrades. From my research, software (WIndows server 2008 built-in) RAID 5 is not expandable, whereas proper RAID cards are. I must be able to expand RAID 5 as I'll be starting with 1.5Tbx2 RAID 1 for OS/Backups/Music etc and 2Tbx3 RAID 5 for movies/tv shows, but that 4Tb on the RAID 5 will be basically full and I'll be adding more drives onto that array.

 

[Albuquerque]

For WHS usage, I will happily recommend my el-cheapo Highpoint 2720SGL card. It's not a benchmark burner, but for $150 USD it is a very, very capable SAS RAID controller. It's a partial-offload device, meaning it has enough hardware onboard to support any RAID level you would realistically expect from a device of this cost (0,1,5,6,10) but will then offload the calculation to the CPU once the operating system is fully started.

Go check out my "RAID: WD or Samsung" thread over in the Hardware Purchase forum

 

[Malo]

Actually for that price it's very good. I was looking at a higher end Highpoint but with a $25 breakout cable, that will give me what I need and I can expand later with the 2nd SFF.

For my use I don't care about write speed, which is where RAID 5/6 can be problematic on cheaper cards and CPU offload, it's all about read speed for streaming media to multiple clients. How long it takes to move a recorded movie from the HTPC to the server is irrelevant.

Thanks! I think my server just got closer to fruition.