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Windows built-in disk mirroring any good?


Bingie

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Now that I have multiple drives internal to a computer, it's time to think how I want the redundancy.

Windows has built-in mirroring (RAID) capabilities.  Haven't tried it yet.  I'm sure it probably works fine.  Only concern is if there is a problem, I doubt if it will send me an email, unless I setup some complex perfmon/schedular/power script to send me an email, which is possible, but a bit of work.

Do I really need RAID?  Up to now, I just ran a program that copied changes once a day.  That was good enough.  I could even have it copy over the network to another pc, like my desktop.

Then there are tools like Drivepool, which are really appealing too, can do all the above and more.  Leaning towards this option actually.  I'd have to buy yet another drive (here we go again), so have redundancy in the server for fault-tolerance, and a 3rd drive in another computer for remote backups.

Anyways, mulling over the options at this point.  I'm sure some of you went thru all of these options too.  I'd like to hear about it.

Thanks

 

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Definitely go with StableBit Drivepool. You won't regret it. I used Windows built in tools for awhile, but suffered too many crashes and completely lost the drive the last time. StableBit allows you to mix and match drives and duplicate files. You can even see all the files on the individual drives. I have about 10 drives in my setup from 6 to 18 tb and they all work great together. I'd get StableBit Drive Scanner too. I've probably warrantied half the drives because StableBit told me there was a problem. If I didn't have the scanner to warn me, the drives would've gone bad without me knowing and I might have lost data.

To sum up... StableBit DrivePool for sure. 😁

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Yeah I was looking at the scanner too, that makes great sense.  I like your warranty idea, catch a problem early enough and get a new drive.  Works for me.

Thanks

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For media files use Drivepool,  You won't get any RAID type speed improvements but the drives can be removed and put in any other computer and easily read as there is nothing special about the formatting.

Windows storage pools have advantages in typical work environment for docs, excel files and things of that nature but come with some cons as well like high storage overhead. Need to pre-plan the way you add drives and how many drives are used at once. Don't need to get into this technically, but if you have an issue with the computer and need to pull the drives to move to another computer you are in for "fun times". :)

KISS - Keep it simple stupid comes to mind for storage.

Now the downside.  You don't have the raid parity drive so if you have a drive failure you can't easily replace the one drive and repair the pool.
With drive pool you can pick/choose drives/folders or the whole pool to duplicate content so everything is on at least two drives.  This requires twice the storage amount and basically is like a traditional mirroring from a storage use standpoint.

What I used to do is only duplicate my home movies and pictures across two drives as I didn't want to lose them.  Then I setup and used SnapRAID with another large drive (as big as your largest single drive) to hold parity info.  You just schedule it manually to run.  That gives you the protection of loosing a drive and being able to rebuild. You can setup as many parity drives as you will need to be able to handle 1, 2, 3, 4, etc drive failures.  I know this works as I had to use it 3 or 4 times. :)

I did stop using SnapRAID when I had a few dozen discs as any single disc loss was only a blip in lost media. I would however run a simple script to dir /s all contents of each drive once a week and write this to my C drive.  In the event of a lost drive I could see what was on that drive and replace any import shows/movies if I wanted.

Lots of options how you configure things but most important is the the drives as still JBOD and can be pulled and read in any other computer.

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