RAID1 Mirror - drive failure testing--while recording

[JBS]

I'm building a new Win10 workstation for Cakewalk, and have been doing some testing of RAID1 (Mirroring). 

I've tried three scenarios:

1) Win10 native software RAID1

2) Win10 Storage Spaces 2-way mirror

3) Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) motherboard hardware/SATA RAID1.

Note: In all scenarios, both drives in the mirror are Seagate Iron Wolf 7200 rpm.

Test Cases:  In each off the three RAID configurations above, I created a test Cakewalk project, armed an audio track, clicked "record", waited approx. 10-15 seconds, then unplugged the power cable to one of the hard-drives in the mirrored pair, to simulate a drive failure.  In all three test cases, Cakewalk continued to run for approx. 3-5 seconds after the power was unplugged from the drive, then I got the classic "Audio Engine Dropout" message, and the Cakewalk application hung up for awhile.

Objective:  In a perfect world, I'd like to have Cakewalk keep running, recording to the surviving drive in the mirror pair, and be alerted so that I could replace the bad drive later, but allow the current tracking take to continue without disrupting Cakewalk (i.e. Audio Dropout + application hang-up).

Glyph:  I talked to Glyph today about their 2-drive solutions.  Sounds like it's not a sure thing that Cakewalk would continue running with their mirrored pair arrays either--not sure if I want to invest in one to test or not, but might have to get a unit to test if I want to find out for sure.

RAID 5 (or 10) options:  I also wonder if perhaps a 3-5 disk array running RAID 5 (or perhaps RAID 10) might provide more continuity and not disrupt Cakewalk,/cause the Audio Dropout and application hang.

I'd love to hear any experiences that folks have had using and actually testing RAID.

Thanks

Edited January 24, 2020 by JBS

[slartabartfast]

Do you have an option to set up raid in the BIOS/UEFI?  There are a lot of complaints about problems using Windows or Win Application mirroring systems. Three to five seconds suggests you are exhausting a buffer (in Windows?).

[JBS]

slartabartfast - the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) motherboard hardware/SATA RAID1 option that I tested is enabled in BIOS (and configured via an app).  It behaved similarly to the WIN10 raid and "storage spaces" configurations.

[slartabartfast]

If you are still having fun, it might be worth it to test the same catastrophic power-off scenario on some software other than Cakewalk to see if this is an application specific issue. If it is just a Cakewalk issue, then it may be the way CW is communicating with the system. In that case, there may not be much you can do, but you could contact CW support with a clearer idea that it is a problem on their side. If you can get a good return policy or a loan of a hardware RAID controller card you might try that, but I would be reluctant to invest a lot in that as a solution until you have a better reason to expect it to work. The advantage would be that it might interpose another system between the BIOS or Windows that would break the cycle, and that it would presumably have its own buffers.