#Softraid convert volume install#
#Softraid convert volume software#
#Softraid convert volume windows#

This is handy in a generic sense but in the event of drive failure you could lose an entire disk and then one of your GOOD disks could have a bad bit and cause a rebuild failure, costing your your precious, precious data. It's simply using an algorithm to bond those disks into one big 'physical' disk to your operating system.

#Softraid convert volume install#

If you're using only a hardware RAID controller, the controller has no idea what you are or are going to install on the disks (nor does it care). If you make a very large RAID array (we'll say something like 4x4tb RAID 5) your likelihood of a puncture (this simply a bad bit on an otherwise functional disk) is quite high. Why use 'Storage Spaces' or ZFS vs a RAID controller:

#Softraid convert volume software#

This is ultimately a mixture of hardware and software that needs to be properly configured. RAID 5 has gotten a bad rap lately because disk sizes are increasing rapidly which is making for very large arrays and increasing the mathematical likelihood of unrecoverable array failure.Ģ) 'Software RAID' like Storage Spaces comes in a lot of flavors and configurations. The RAID5 stuff in Disk Management is garbage, do not use it.ġ) There is nothing inherently wrong with hardware RAID. You can add a 4th disk later and rebalance the pool to being more like RAID10 (2 columns, 2 stripes).

You can absolutely open up Server Manager and create a 3 disk 'Mirror' pool, which will function like RAID1E (mostly), and give you 6TB available, rather than 8TB as you would get with Parity mode, but you get much better write performance, and better resiliency. There's a reason it's only offered in the DC version: it's not useful outside of a clustered scenario. You do NOT need anything offered with the 'Direct' as you're not doing clustered storage.

#Softraid convert volume windows#

Windows Server 2016 Standard has Storage Spaces, but not Storage Spaces Direct. When combined with ReFS, with the integrity streams enabled and enforced, it will also checksum your data like ZFS does.Īlso, I think you're confusing Storage Spaces with Storage Spaces Direct. It will divide your disks into chunks, then ensure all data exists on 2 disks (for 4 disks or fewer), or 3 disks (for 5 disks or greater). Do note that Mirror in Storage Spaces is NOT RAID1. I'd strongly suggest using the Mirror mode. Unless you're doing a HEAVILY read-oriented system, Storage Spaces Parity mode is less than optimal.

(Better, as in: If a drive dies, I just want to replace it and rebuild automatically, and if I have to move two working drives to another Windows 2016 server for data recovery, it just works.) Has anyone done any actual experience with Storage Spaces over regular RAID-5 Volumes and could advice which one would be a better option? I've seen some discussion about more disks and using multiple redundancy (instead of just protecting against a single disk failure), and I've seen tons of discussion about Storage Spaces Direct (which seems to be the only thing anyone on Server 2016 seems to talk about). However, I haven't been able to find much information about why I would use Storage Spaces Parity over a regular RAID-5 Volume in a 3-disk/single parity setup. However, the big new Storage Feature since Server 2012 has been Storage Spaces, which offers Parity.

I could create a regular RAID-5 Volume in Computer Management, which has been supported for several Windows Server versions (Back to Server 2000 or at least Server 2003?) The server itself is virtualized, running on a Windows Server 2016 Standard in Hyper-V, with the disks being physically attached to the VM in Hyper-V. I have a single Windows Server 2016 Standard Server, with 3x 4 TB drives, on plain SATA Controllers (2x On-Board Intel, 1x Add-On PCI Express Asmedia 1061).