Software 'RAID' alternatives

Scottland

Scottland

Scottland

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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North Wales
Hi,

I'm looking at storage options within windows for some sort of redundancy. It'll be a file store, so large media files etc. I'm not sure there's a need for full mirroring of these files, plus it's a bit of a waste of space. I had planned to use Windows storage spaces in parity mode a it seems a fair middle ground - but have read several 'horror' stories of pools failing and data unrecoverable as the disks aren't readable outside of the pool.

I'm pondering some other options, DrivePool seems to get lots of praise but I don't think it offers a parity type mode - only duplication. FlexRAID is another but I don't know much about it yet...

Any thoughts on the above? At the end of the day, I'm not storing mission critical stuff - so I don't need anything too hardcore, but I do want some sort of redundancy in case of disk failure.


Thanks
 
I spent ages evaluating storage spaces vs DrivePool. In the end I chose DrivePool, it's awesome :). What I love about it mostly is that I can still keep the pooled disks mounted on my server, and I can still write whatever I want to them as normal outside of the pool. I don't lose the whole disk because it's in my storage pool.

As for storing the pool contents, DrivePool just creates a hidden folder on the root of the disk which it uses to store its files, once inside that folder the directory structure is just like any other folder on your PC so if you need to put the disk in another drive to recover it it's simple to extract things.

It doesn't offer parity you're right but it does give you the ability to mirror folders or their subfolders (rather than the whole disk) as many times as you like, and lets you select which drives are used as the backing-store particular folders. For example, I have my pictures set to mirror 3 times to 3 different "good" hard drives. I have my music set to mirror twice to one "good" and one "slightly iffy", "slightly old and slow" hard drive :D. I do this because it lets me localise where my files are which makes recovery easier, rather than having the contents of a folder being split over 15 different hard disks.

You might as well buy Stablebit Scanner at the same time. It integrates with DrivePool and if the scanner detects a failing HD it will talk to DrivePool and evacuate your data from the failing disks :). You can also set it up to email you in advance if it detects a HD starting to go.

It's well worth for ~£20 for them both :).
 
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I use Drive Bender which is much the same as Stablebit Drive Pool. Generally speaking I'd recommend it, it's served me very well so far including through a HDD failure. That said, I've been taking a look at Stablebit and it seems to have a lot of extra features that i would like. For example duplicating files on more than just one other drive and also the finer granularity of where things are stored/duplicated.
 
Thanks for the replies, everyone seems to love Deivepool but I'm actually erring on the side of Flexraid as it seems to offer more of what I want.

Can't help but think having a duplicate copy of a large video library is a waste of space, but a parity drive could offer me something in between no redundancy and a full mirror/duplicate.
 
I just plain don't care about redundancy for "throwaway" stuff like music and videos, where they are not critical, and can be replaced.

That's why I use DrivePool, and only duplicate the folders that I actually care about the possibility of losing - that being documents and photos. Losing a whole disk to parity is money that I can't justify for a home server.
 
i just use storage spaces in server 2012 for my two 2TB drives. One virtual volume of just under 4TB of all my media, redundency is not an issue as its backed up to a usb HD. If that dies i have my synology nas as a last resort
 
Storage Pools / spaces in Windows is very immature, things light evicting disks don't exist or work poorly.

The alternative to software raid? Hardware raid.
 
How are you getting on with Flexraid Scottland?

I'm considering using it for a large 20TB+ file server.

I've ruled out hardware raid as it's not flexible enough to easily be able to add drives to the array at a later stage. I'm also against anything linux based, it's just not me. Also against ZFS, I want to be able to pull a drive from the array and be able to read its contents from any other machine. This is important to me.

I've been spending quite a bit of time looking at the various software raid options. I'm not really interested in mirroring, I see it as a waste of disks in a home environment.

Storage Spaces was something that I was hesitant to even consider due to the issues with the technology in the past with Windows Home Server 2011. Seems like many of the issues have been cleared up since then, and it is a very stable feature. However, when using parity mode write speeds are quite slow unfortunately, which makes me strike it off the contenders list.
 
Well I've ruled out FlexRaid-F. The non real time parity creation of the FlexRaid-F variant would mean that any edited files before a parity build would likely cause data corruption. I see FlexRaid-F is much better suited to be used as cold storage. Static files which once saved won't be changed or edited.

FlexRaid-T - Could be an option, it builds the parity in real time but the penalty is I'd be restricted to only 30-35/MBs write speeds with WD Red drives. The use of a landing drive would mask this to the end user though. I am a little skeptical about the product though and if it'll stand up to long term use.

I'm quite frustrated here, I've been researching for a couple of days now and I keep going in circles. I want to be able to use ZFS, as on paper it ticks all the boxes. But the whole issue around not being able to add drives to an existing pool is an annoying one, especially as I am looking to buy a 16 bay server case and add drives over time. From what I've read, this just wouldn't work with ZFS?
 
Pho said:
I spent ages evaluating storage spaces vs DrivePool. In the end I chose DrivePool, it's awesome :). What I love about it mostly is that I can still keep the pooled disks mounted on my server, and I can still write whatever I want to them as normal outside of the pool. I don't lose the whole disk because it's in my storage pool.

As for storing the pool contents, DrivePool just creates a hidden folder on the root of the disk which it uses to store its files, once inside that folder the directory structure is just like any other folder on your PC so if you need to put the disk in another drive to recover it it's simple to extract things.

It doesn't offer parity you're right but it does give you the ability to mirror folders or their subfolders (rather than the whole disk) as many times as you like, and lets you select which drives are used as the backing-store particular folders. For example, I have my pictures set to mirror 3 times to 3 different "good" hard drives. I have my music set to mirror twice to one "good" and one "slightly iffy", "slightly old and slow" hard drive :D. I do this because it lets me localise where my files are which makes recovery easier, rather than having the contents of a folder being split over 15 different hard disks.

You might as well buy Stablebit Scanner at the same time. It integrates with DrivePool and if the scanner detects a failing HD it will talk to DrivePool and evacuate your data from the failing disks :). You can also set it up to email you in advance if it detects a HD starting to go.

It's well worth for ~£20 for them both :).
Click to expand...

This.

I have 3 of each file I want.

1. I use my Synology for the 24/7 access of the files.

2. Server running Stablebit Drivepool for making a soft array from some old drives I had lying around. I robocopy the files from the NAS to this.

3. Removable large hard drive in the server above which get's it's filed robocopied from the NAS.


My server is only on for about 10 minutes a week.
 
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