Drive pooling/parity software vs Windows 7 "Spanning"

GroggyTech · 11 Nov 2013 at 20:46

My goal is to have one massive storage pool/drive extender whatever term you want to use to easily store my video data (10TB plus). I am not going for any redundancy since most of the data is retrievable via bi-monthly backups or i can re-rip my blue rays etc (but of course i want something good/stable)

From my research using a drive pooling software like "Drive Bender", "StablBit" or "FlexRAID" is better than "Spanning" on windows 7 since the latter leaves the MBR on the first drive; so if the first drive goes all data across all drives is lost. However with 3rd party software this is not the case; one drive goes then the data on THAT drive goes but not on the others.

Firstly is this correct?

Secondly if so what software or other solutions would people recommend. I don't care about price; i want ease of use and stability

Thirdly I would actually prefer to use windows software raid as this seems like the easist and most compatible option. So is there a way to have that if one disk fails only data on THAT disk is gone and the rest is retrievable; by inserting it into an external caddy or a different PC?

Thanks for the help

GroggyTech · 12 Nov 2013 at 18:12

bledd · 13 Nov 2013 at 13:46

I like the sound of StableBit personally.

easyrider · 7 Dec 2013 at 15:34

I have recently build a 2012 server and installed Stablebit drivepool..I did build a stoarge space but it was utter turd,

Stablebit drivepool Quite frankly its the nuts.

The beauty is you can read the drives data outside the pool on any machine. If you have created a pool and want to upgrade the motherboard etc...just disconnect the drives replace the motherboard and OS reinstall drivepool and voila and instant drivepool with all your data in tact.

WHS v1 couldn't do this.

Duplication at folder level. Choose to only duplicate certain folders in the pool.Or not have duplication.

Support is exceptional and tie it in with Stablebit scanner and you are off.

You can even control your pool from another PC remotely.

bledd · 8 Dec 2013 at 14:55

What happens in this scenario.

You have 2x 10gb drives in a drive pool.

Then you copy a 12gb file to the pool. Or would it not allow this?

leezer3 · 8 Dec 2013 at 19:46

bledd. said:
What happens in this scenario.

You have 2x 10gb drives in a drive pool.

Then you copy a 12gb file to the pool. Or would it not allow this?

Stablebit wouldn't like this, I suspect it'd probably just refuse to copy the file at all- It's just a fancy interface to NTFS junction points and a scanner thingy.
I'd be pretty scared if you managed to get a file bigger than any reasonable modern disk mind (The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is a dual-layer BD ISO onto a 32gb SSD)

In essence, for that to work, you need a RAID/ spanning solution, not a disk pooling solution.

-Leezer-

easyrider · 8 Dec 2013 at 20:06

leezer3 said:
Stablebit wouldn't like this, I suspect it'd probably just refuse to copy the file at all- It's just a fancy interface to NTFS junction points and a scanner thingy.

-Leezer-

No Its not.Its like DE for WHS V1 but far more powerful. Its a big hit in the Server community.

leezer3 · 9 Dec 2013 at 01:28

easyrider said:
No Its not.Its like DE for WHS V1 but far more powerful. Its a big hit in the Server community.

It's seriously all the same technology- NTFS junction points

WHS V1 did it very slightly differently, but in exactly the same underlying manner; In essence, it used arbitrary filenames and paths linked into the abstraction layer rather than storing them in the original format, but it still fundamentally functioned through NTFS junctions.

Whether you like it or not, this is simply a different abstraction layer and fancy interface to the same underlying technology

In essence, their abstraction layer simply redirecting the file writes to the appropriate disk based upon the set of rules previously defined and from there adding this location of the physical file to their virtual index drive.

This method of doing things is by no means a bad thing, but exactly the same fundamental limitations apply to it as to any other NTFS filesystem, for instance the fact that you simply cannot have a file bigger than the volume upon which it resides.
You are also getting no parity from this, other than the option to copy your file onto multiple physical volumes. To get parity, you need RAID (Preferably hardware) with error correction built in.

I will note that DriveBender is again exactly the same technology, all that differs is the abstraction layer and the fancy interface that they've stuck on top of it.

None of this is new technology; The tools to do it manually have been around since Vista, and as I've mentioned in the other thread, there are many tools to manage NTFS junction points, some of which are free.

-Leezer-