Which Version For Full Implementation of Storage Spaces ?

I want to build a Windows 8 box that uses Storage Spaces to create a
Raid-5-like redundant storage space using 12 2-TB drives.

The PC in question has an old Asus mobo with an Intel Core2 Duo
CPU E700 running @2.8GHz with 2 gigs of memory which I plan to upgrade
to 8 gigs before attempting this little venture.

So Far, I see:

- Windows 8
- Windows 8 Pro
- Windows 8.1 Full Version
- Windows 8.1 System BUilder OEM DVD 64-Bit

I don't wan to chince out... OTOH, no sense throwing away good money on
a feature set I don't need.

Which version do you recommend?
--
Pete Cresswell

Per (PeteCresswell):
Which version do you recommend?

Got it... Just plain "Windows 8.1" as per
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/conten...ndows-810.html


--
Pete Cresswell

(PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per (PeteCresswell):
Which version do you recommend?

Got it... Just plain "Windows 8.1" as per
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/conten...ndows-810.html



Read up a bit on it first.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...en-it-works/3/

https://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/...-design-flaws/

Those refs are from the Wikipedia article on Storage Spaces. I
had to use the references, because the Wiki didn't have enough
"meat" in it.

I don't know what explanation there is for the speed.
If a large file is interleaved across disks, you would
think it would write faster.

Paul

Per Paul:
Read up a bit on it first.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...en-it-works/3/
https://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/...-design-flaws/

Thanks.

Not exactly deal breakers - but enough to make me start looking at
DriveBender.

I can deal with almost any level of poor performance because the use is
just as a backup for my NAS box. Only runs when I do backups and I
usually just fire them up and go to bed....

The ugly part for me is drive replacement.

I'm still not sure what has to happen when a drive fails - wasn't sure
under WHS either...

- Can I just replace the failed drive by swapping a new one into
it's physical location/SATA connection?

- Or do I have to have another SATA connection available at all times
to deal with adding the replacement drive first ?

If it turns out that DriveBender runs under Windows 7 and doesn't have
any bad reviews, I call it a slam dunk..... even under 8.1....
--
Pete Cresswell

(PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per Paul:
Read up a bit on it first.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...en-it-works/3/
https://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/...-design-flaws/

Thanks.

Not exactly deal breakers - but enough to make me start looking at
DriveBender.

I can deal with almost any level of poor performance because the use is
just as a backup for my NAS box. Only runs when I do backups and I
usually just fire them up and go to bed....

The ugly part for me is drive replacement.

I'm still not sure what has to happen when a drive fails - wasn't sure
under WHS either...

- Can I just replace the failed drive by swapping a new one into
it's physical location/SATA connection?

- Or do I have to have another SATA connection available at all times
to deal with adding the replacement drive first ?

If it turns out that DriveBender runs under Windows 7 and doesn't have
any bad reviews, I call it a slam dunk..... even under 8.1....

I would think replacing a bad drive with a good one, then
looking for a "array rebuild" option, is all that is needed.
The bad drive is of no use to you any more, once the status
has changed. If distributed parity of some sort is being used,
the software just "recalculates" the drive contents on the
missing member. You can get some ideas here, how the math
behind it works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

Paul

On Mon, 19 Oct 2015 19:37:18 -0400, "(PeteCresswell)" wrote:

Per Paul:
Read up a bit on it first.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...en-it-works/3/
https://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/...-design-flaws/

Thanks.

Not exactly deal breakers - but enough to make me start looking at
DriveBender.

DriveBender? I just wrote about that in another post. I didn't think anyone
else had even heard of it.

I can deal with almost any level of poor performance because the use is
just as a backup for my NAS box. Only runs when I do backups and I
usually just fire them up and go to bed....

The ugly part for me is drive replacement.

At its core, DriveBender is a drive pooling tool. You throw any number of
any-sized drives at it and it seamlessly combines them into a single, very
large, volume. My pools/volumes are 28TB and 30TB, respectively.

Data redundancy, however, is quite secondary. You can designate any number
of folders that you want to be redundant and DriveBender will quietly create
two copies of those folders, making sure that the two copies reside on
different physical drives. I suppose you could designate every folder to be
a redundant folder, but that halves the storage space.

With any drive pooling method, or at least with this one, keep in mind that
as your drives begin to fill up, you're limited to saving files no bigger
than the amount of space you have on a single drive. To put it another way,
files are *never* split across drives. You can remove a drive from the
DriveBender pool at any time, connect it to another PC, and read the files
from it without any problem. No special drivers or software are needed.

Here's another peek behind the scenes: with a DriveBender pool, whenever you
create a new folder, DriveBender creates that folder on each drive in the
pool. That's an intentional design decision, as they feel it's better to
create folders that might never be used than to need a folder later and not
have it when it's time to write a file.

I'm still not sure what has to happen when a drive fails - wasn't sure
under WHS either...

- Can I just replace the failed drive by swapping a new one into
it's physical location/SATA connection?

- Or do I have to have another SATA connection available at all times
to deal with adding the replacement drive first ?

If it turns out that DriveBender runs under Windows 7 and doesn't have
any bad reviews, I call it a slam dunk..... even under 8.1....

DriveBender has the capability to replace a failed drive, but data will only
be preserved if you have designated the folders on that drive to be
redundant. If yes, then there's another copy of the data on another drive,
so when you replace the failed drive, DriveBender will quietly recreate a
second copy. If the folders on the failed drive weren't designated as
redundant, then the data on the failed drive will be lost. Even so, you can
still pop out a failed drive and pop a new drive in. You will have lost any
non-redundant data, but DriveBender will immediately start using the new
drive.

I give DriveBender a thumbs up.

If you need additional data protection, SnapRaid would be my choice. I
mentioned where to get it in my other post.

Good luck and please follow up with what you decide. I'll be curious to see
which way you go.

Char Jackson wrote:
On Mon, 19 Oct 2015 19:37:18 -0400, "(PeteCresswell)" wrote:

Per Paul:
Read up a bit on it first.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...en-it-works/3/
https://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/...-design-flaws/
Thanks.

Not exactly deal breakers - but enough to make me start looking at
DriveBender.

DriveBender? I just wrote about that in another post. I didn't think anyone
else had even heard of it.

I can deal with almost any level of poor performance because the use is
just as a backup for my NAS box. Only runs when I do backups and I
usually just fire them up and go to bed....

The ugly part for me is drive replacement.

At its core, DriveBender is a drive pooling tool. You throw any number of
any-sized drives at it and it seamlessly combines them into a single, very
large, volume. My pools/volumes are 28TB and 30TB, respectively.

Data redundancy, however, is quite secondary. You can designate any number
of folders that you want to be redundant and DriveBender will quietly create
two copies of those folders, making sure that the two copies reside on
different physical drives. I suppose you could designate every folder to be
a redundant folder, but that halves the storage space.

With any drive pooling method, or at least with this one, keep in mind that
as your drives begin to fill up, you're limited to saving files no bigger
than the amount of space you have on a single drive. To put it another way,
files are *never* split across drives. You can remove a drive from the
DriveBender pool at any time, connect it to another PC, and read the files
from it without any problem. No special drivers or software are needed.

Here's another peek behind the scenes: with a DriveBender pool, whenever you
create a new folder, DriveBender creates that folder on each drive in the
pool. That's an intentional design decision, as they feel it's better to
create folders that might never be used than to need a folder later and not
have it when it's time to write a file.

I'm still not sure what has to happen when a drive fails - wasn't sure
under WHS either...

- Can I just replace the failed drive by swapping a new one into
it's physical location/SATA connection?

- Or do I have to have another SATA connection available at all times
to deal with adding the replacement drive first ?

If it turns out that DriveBender runs under Windows 7 and doesn't have
any bad reviews, I call it a slam dunk..... even under 8.1....

DriveBender has the capability to replace a failed drive, but data will only
be preserved if you have designated the folders on that drive to be
redundant. If yes, then there's another copy of the data on another drive,
so when you replace the failed drive, DriveBender will quietly recreate a
second copy. If the folders on the failed drive weren't designated as
redundant, then the data on the failed drive will be lost. Even so, you can
still pop out a failed drive and pop a new drive in. You will have lost any
non-redundant data, but DriveBender will immediately start using the new
drive.

I give DriveBender a thumbs up.

If you need additional data protection, SnapRaid would be my choice. I
mentioned where to get it in my other post.

Good luck and please follow up with what you decide. I'll be curious to see
which way you go.


Does it have redundancy (parity) to handle
drive failure ?

Paul

Per Char Jackson:
Data redundancy, however, is quite secondary. You can designate any number
of folders that you want to be redundant and DriveBender will quietly create
two copies of those folders, making sure that the two copies reside on
different physical drives. I suppose you could designate every folder to be
a redundant folder, but that halves the storage space.

One appeal of both of these products is that I can probably run them
under my old WHS license or one of my spare XP licenses - i.e. I don't
have to spring for another Windows 7 or 8.1 license.

At what level does DriveBender mirror redundant folders to different
physical drives?

e.g. Suppose I have a folder called "B" with subfolders "DVDs_NetFlix",
"Streamed_HBO", "Streamed_NetFlix"... and so-forth.

And under each of those folders are hundreds of individual folders - one
for each movie....and maybe multiple subfolders per movie.

Obviously "B" is going to be huge - as in tens of TB.... and the average
movie's folder is going to be about 4 gigs.

There's more, but you get the idea....

Given redundancy for all folders, are those huge top-level folders going
to be a problem ?


I am looking at SnapRaid right now.... Trying to find some feature that
makes it preferable to DriveBender for my use. But, for something like
this, I think I am partial to paid applications (i.e. DriveBender) over
freebies like SnapRaid.

Do you know anybody who uses SnapRaid ?

58 Terabytes ??? Wow....

Are you using redundancy in your implementation of DriveBender ?

How are you physically managing all those drives?

- Multiple SATA cards ?
- Some sort of backplane box ?

All I have right now is a large tower case and have it maxed out with 13
drives - but changing drives is a chore and I'm stuck at 13.

--
Pete Cresswell