BIG/SPAN (RAID): How does it works here?

Question

I have some questions about BIG/SPAN. In my question I will talk about two hard drives spanned together.

• How is the data spanned across the two drives? Will it span according to files or on byte level? Or does this depend on the controller?
• Can you access the data of the hard drive which didn't failed without the origin controller? Is it possible to access the data of only one hard drive?

Answer 1

BIG/SPAN suffers all the same drawbacks as JBOD, except it presents as a partition (volume) rather then a drive.

So- It works”on a byte” level” would be closer then file - actually it works on a block level.

It does not let you access remaining data if the first drive fails You MIGHT have limited luck if other drives fail - for recovery purposes depending on the filesystem, fragmentation etc.

You cant rely on it working in the absence of the controller, but, I imagine it will work with a similar controller if you get lucky.

SPAN/BIG plays as fast and loose with your data as JBOD.