Q:

What's the difference between RAID 1 software mirroring and Fake RAID?

I've just ordered two new hard drives for my main desktop and a copy of Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. I'd like to do a clean install of Windows 7 onto the new drives (leaving my old Windows XP Professional boot partition around for a while in case something goes disastrously wrong, etc.). I want to have them set up in mirrored (RAID 1) mode.
My understanding is that Windows 7 Pro can do software mirroring, but can I set this up directly at install time? If so, how? Note that I'd like the disk to be split into three partitions (OS, applications and data, and bulk data), all of which should be mirrored.
Would it be better (more reliable or faster) to use my motherboard's hardware RAID support? My motherboard is an older nVidia nForce 680i SLI, which is not the most stable of motherboards, and I'm not sure how trustworthy its RAID 1 configuration might be (or if Windows 7 could even detect and install onto a hardware-mirrored volume). Also, the performance characteristics of RAID 1 are rather different than RAID 0 or RAID 5, and I'm wondering if Windows 7's software mirroring might actually be faster than hardware RAID 1 (for example, I'm more of a Unix administrator when I have to wear the system administrator hat, and I've had great success deploying ZFS; most hardware RAID 1 implementations have to read both disks and compare results to look for data errors, but ZFS can read from only one disk in the mirror and just use the built-in checksum, meaning it can have up to 2x the number of reads in-flight, as long as there's no data corruption).
Edit: Okay, my question about whether Windows 7 can do software mirroring has been answered, and it can. I'm still unsure whether Windows software RAID or my motherboard's hardware "fake RAID" function is a better choice, though. Remember, I'm only interested in mirroring -- not the more complicated striping or parity operations that generally show the poor performance of crappy motherboard RAID solutions.

A:

My two cents:
Windows 7 probably requires you to convert to dynamic volumes to do mirroring. In the past, this has introduced all kinds of headaches due to compatibility with other disk utilities. Also, dynamic volumes are very easy to mess up, if you ever have to do disk recovery operations. I know this from personal experience. I usually avoid dynamic volumes "like the plague". 
Mirroring on your motherboard usually retains a compatible structure on the disk, meaning as long as your onboard sata drivers are also loaded in the OS, you can move either of the mirrored drives to the regular sata port, and boot into the OS just fine, so your not really sticking your neck out in terms of recoverability. 
Performance wise, they are probably both about the same: both use your CPU to do all the work. 
Finally, the motherboard RAID might have additional useful features, such as automatic e-mail notification if a member fails, which comes in handy....

A:

I think performance wise, your best bet is to try both and benchmark, and share the results here for everyone to see!  I would suggest using the ATTO Disk Benchmark utility.
As far as which I'd choose, I hate "fake raid".  Always caused me more problems than it prevented.  Get a real RAID controller or do software RAID.  The only reason software RAID wasn't very popular in the past is because of performance issues, but that's a thing of the past.

A:

It really depends on the motherboard's hardware RAID. A lot of cheaper (read: no-server) motherboards require you to install software RAID drivers within Windows anyway.
Also, a hardware RAID will be handled using your motherboard, and therefore can become tied to your motherboard.  If your concerned about the stability of your motherboard already, I would avoid its RAID like the plague.
In this circumstance, unless your motherboard has actual hardware RAID (not the standard fake hardware RAID) you are much better off sticking with Windows 7 RAID. Even when considering pure hardware RAID vs. software RAID there are trade-offs with each system, and IMO hardware RAID is only necessary in a production environment.

