RAID vs Storage Spaces with ASUS Motherboard

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Nearing the end of a contract with nothing on the horizon, I figure now would be a good time for a full reinstall of Windows and all the software I want to keep using.

 

My Motherboard is an ASUS X99-A II (not the Deluxe model).  My boot drive is a 1TB WD Blue SN550, and my internal data drives are five 1TB Samsung 860 EVO SSDs.  Other than the regular computer uses, I do video editing with Avid Media Composer and some VFX work with Adobe After Effects and Mocha from Boris FX.  Currently, the five 860 EVOs are set up as a pool for Storage Spaces divided into one parity space and one two-way mirror space.  I’m wondering if I should reconfigure them as RAID 10 through the Motherboard when I do the reinstallation instead of sticking with Storage Spaces.

Any thoughts / advice / warnings / alternate suggestions are welcome (with much gratitude in advance).  Let me know if you need further system specs if my attempt at simplicity left out an important detail.

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I’m not a fan of RAID on a home machine unless you really know what you are doing. I will assume you do. 🙂

Running disk arrays from hardware is preferable as a Windows problems won’t crash your array. Software arrays are also generally slower than hardware.

Make sure you can monitor the hardware array and get notifications of problems. If you can’t do that, use a software array.

If all you want is space – the SSDs are plenty fast enough – then you can either use JBOD to create one large disk, or RAID 5 to add some protection if a disk fails. RAID 5 will add some overhead, but they are fast SSDs…

Most important, make sure you have sufficient space for a regular, full backup of the array. Given the machine I would opt for a network connected disk – maybe off your router – with an optional second air gapped backup.

See this article for details of checking your data / disks.

cheers, Paul

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James Lawson

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Thanks for the reply, Paul.

The intention of the RAID is twofold – having a single workspace instead of five separate ones, and some protection against drive failure (we all know that’s inevitable).

I have automatic back-ups to my home NAS as well as to Backblaze, so that is covered.

I gather you lean towards RAID 5 instead of RAID 10.  I was wondering about that after I posted my original question.

I am pretty computer savvy after all these years, but am new to RAID.  When you say “Running disk arrays from hardware…”, does using the motherboard to configure the array count, or would I require some new PCIe card?

James

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I prefer RAID 10 for the redundancy, for which you sacrifice some storage space.

My NAS is a DIY Minitower PC running the latest available version, fully updated via Windows Update, of Windows 10 Pro (driver updates disabled via Group Policy) in a vanilla Microsoft installation
Intel DH87RL Motherboard (circa 2013)
Core i5 4670 CPU @4.3GHz (circa 2013)
32GB DDR3 SDRAM @1600MHz
120GB Intel mSATA SSD for OS
Motherboard-configured 7.27TB RAID 10 array monitored/controlled by Intel Rapid Storage Technology

With RAID 10, two drives can fail without losing the array as long as they are on different sets.   As for performance, I have no complaints.  I have had a drive fail, hot-swapped it with a ready spare, and the array was rebuilt in a few hours with no noticeable difference in performance.

I also upgraded the array from 3TB drives to 4TB drives, and after the fourth drive was finished, the array was upgraded to its full capacity with no intervention on my part.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

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James Lawson

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RAID 5 prioritizes space over speed – space = (number of disks x capacity) – 1 disk. RAID 10 prioritizes speed.
When you lose a disk in RAID 5 reads are slower because data has to be reconstructed from the remaining disks.

As you are running SSDs I see no reason to spend extra money to gain speed.

Hardware RAID is managed by your mobo / add-in board – in your case the mobo. Software RAID is managed by your OS. I prefer hardware RAID because hardware is faster and it’s one less thing for an OS crash to break – the hardware presents the RAID array as a single disk for Windows to use.

cheers, Paul

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