Storage Spaces - Parity vs Mirrored or Single with Robocopy

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So I'm thinking of dropping my Synology RAID 6 NAS and upgrading to Storage Spaces. I have a number of dissimilar sized drives and Storage Spaces would allow me to use those. My NAS is maxed out at 4 drives. I've had a wonderful experience with 4 x 1.5TB drives not having one issue over 5 years.

I attribute that to the SHR (synology hybrid raid (maybe EXT4)). I'm wondering if Storage Spaces will be that reliable? Would I use Parity or Mirrored? I see Mirrored has "scubbing".

My other option is to simply create a "simple" JBOD pool and set up a robo-copy to transfer the data. (The data is all archival). For the Simple is there drive maintenance (scrubbing)?

tjcinnamon

Posted 2016-08-08T19:30:29.660

Reputation: 101

Before you make this change. Consider this, Storage Spaces received zero updates, when Windows 10 was released. I personally wouldn't stop using something that hasn't one a single issue in 5 years, for something Ihave never used, and has not recieved any additional features since it was introduced. I hope you like Windows, and only use Windows, because its literally the only OS that can read Storage Spaces. – Ramhound – 2016-08-08T19:37:21.847

I could also use freeNAS. Does that allow dissimilar drive sizes to be added to drive pool? – tjcinnamon – 2016-08-08T20:28:13.137

Answers

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If you plan on using RAID I don't suggest using drives of different sizes. You can with mdadm in Linux but unless you're sizing to the lowest common denominator it'll be painfully complex to manage (trust me, I tried it once). If you want to just create one giant disk with no redundancy you can use LVM in linux to create PVs and combine them into an LV. To get an idea of how this works, look here: https://askubuntu.com/a/219988/210757

I can't personally recommend Storage Spaces because Microsoft doesn't have a track record of being a solid RAID option, FreeNAS on the other hand is worth consideration.

user186658

Posted 2016-08-08T19:30:29.660

Reputation: 127

I'll look into the Linux option. I was looking at freeNAS but you can't expand the drive pool once its created. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that – tjcinnamon – 2016-08-09T22:30:05.223