Windows Storage Spaces Questions

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todeshund

Reputable
Nov 15, 2014
7
0
4,510
My system:
Core i5-750
16GB RAM
Motherboard with 6 sata ports
1x500GB as system drive (Drive C) (OSwin10+NTFS)
4x2TB as data storage (NTFS/ReFS, haven't decided yet)

I have 4x2TB empty & new drives which I would like to setup for "two-way mirror" (RAID1 equiv.) or "parity" (RAID5 equiv.) on windows storage spaces. This system will be on 24/7 for NAS or home server purposes.

With "parity" & "two-way mirror", theoretically I can have 1 drive fail without loss of data, and quickly plug in a same capacity replacement drive, then let it rebuild itself.

The questions are:
1. If I setup "parity" on the 4 data drives, and my system (C: 500GB) drive fails, can I move the 4 data drives to a different computer and access the "parity" storage space?

2.If I setup "two-way mirror" on the 4 data drives, and my system (C: 500GB) drive fails, can I move the 4 data drives to a different computer and access the "mirror" storage space?

*also a follow up question: for the storage space, should I use NTFS/ReFS? I am inclined to use ReFS because of the self-healing capability (no more chkdsk).

**note that any data on the system (500GB) drive will be of no importance to me if this case should happen, I just want to know that I can move the storage space to a brand new computer and access the data on the storage space which will be used for archiving important documents, pictures, videos and backups.

Sorry if my English is bad/not proper, it is a second language.
Any information would be appreciated. Thankyou in advance.:)
 
Solution
B
1) You will need to recreate the windows storage space settings on another computer to access the drives
Now with RAID 5 you often risk loosing a drive during rebuild.

2) With a mirror you do not need to setup the array to access the data. If using a imaging/recovery software like macrium then you could even boot into recovery and restore a backup without needing a working windows install

3) Not experienced with ReFS so I will let someone more experienced answer that.

If your home-server's main function is to hold media files (especially video), then I would make a different recommendation:
For my media drives on my server I use a inexpensive software called FlexRaid. With flexraid I am able to setup a software raid to mimic RAID...
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boosted1g

Titan
Jun 12, 2013
14,846
8
74,965
1) You will need to recreate the windows storage space settings on another computer to access the drives
Now with RAID 5 you often risk loosing a drive during rebuild.

2) With a mirror you do not need to setup the array to access the data. If using a imaging/recovery software like macrium then you could even boot into recovery and restore a backup without needing a working windows install

3) Not experienced with ReFS so I will let someone more experienced answer that.

If your home-server's main function is to hold media files (especially video), then I would make a different recommendation:
For my media drives on my server I use a inexpensive software called FlexRaid. With flexraid I am able to setup a software raid to mimic RAID 5.
I have 4 drives of different sizes, 3 of them are spanned together to be seen as 1 11TB volume, and the 4th drive has parity calculated specifically to it.
Now the spanned volume of 3 disks are seen as 1 large drive but function as individual drives; each video file is only stored on 1 drive and not spanned across all 3 drives. This means that at worst case scenario I only loose data on the dead drives and not any of the other ones, it also means I don't need expensive enterprise drives as each drive has significantly less wear and tear on them.
The downside to this setup is that it would use a lot of system resources if it was constantly calculating parity with every file change. Instead I have it do it once a week overnight. With movie files and other data that once it is written to the drive it is not really changed, the once a week parity is more then sufficient. Now if you were running databases and things that have constant changes then this setup is not for that (in reality then you need a full hardware raid setup anyways).
 
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