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I want to setup software raid 0 under Windows 10. There seems to be software RAID 0, Striped Dynamic Disk, Striped Storage Space in Windows 10, all of can do data striping across multiple disks. Based on my limited research, I couldn't find a clean explanation on what the difference, advantages and disadvantages of these three things is.
Could someone with good knowledge on the matter give a comparison?
user1282931
Posted 2019-11-26T19:10:31.300
Reputation: 204
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Dynamic disks is an old technology that Microsoft is not developing any more. Therefore, you will not find there support for newer technologies.
Most important, if you are using SSDs, you should know that striped dynamic disks do not support TRIM (example post).
Apart from this, performance of the two is rather similar. You may find in this answer one benchmark of the comparative performance. (You should be careful to create the Storage Space with enough columns, see link1 and link2, which usually requires using PowerShell.)
harrymc
Posted 2019-11-26T19:10:31.300
Reputation: 306 093
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They all involve RAID: Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Drives.
RAID 0 is a pair (or more) of basic drives where files are saved on any drive in the RAID set. There is no redundancy; if any drive fails, you lose everything on the RAID set, everything on all drives. Its primary advantages are added space above the size of any one drive, plus faster performance. It can be used on all major operating systems.
Striped storage space on basic drives is used in RAID drive sets (except RAID 0 and RAID 1) on all major operating systems. Files are distributed in stripes across multiple basic drives for greater performance, while a portion of each drive is used to hold 'checksums'. Those checksums can be used if one drive fails to reconstitute a failed drive once it is replaced. Multiple different kinds of RAID volumes can be used with striped storage space to allow the system administrator to make a choice of performance against redundancy for data safety.
A dynamic disk is a Microsoft-only option for NTFS drives only. A dynamic volume can have more drives added to it later on after originally created. A dynamic volume can be striped so data spans across multiple drives, and a RAID 5 (only) array can be set up with dynamic drives. It is very complex to convert a dynamic drive back to a basic drive.
K7AAY
Posted 2019-11-26T19:10:31.300
Reputation: 6 962
I should have been more precise, I meant specifically the Windows features 'Storage Space' with striping and 'Dynamic Disk' with striping. Also, what other options are there to get a software raid 0 under windows? – user1282931 – 2019-11-26T19:39:21.430
for example, it seems that dynamic disks and storage spaces both are ways to do software Raid 0 under windows (at least they come up when searching for tutorials on how to do software raid 0 under windows) - but storage spaces isn't bootable for example while a dynamic disk aparently is – user1282931 – 2019-11-26T19:42:15.433
OK! Please click https://superuser.com/posts/1505341/edit and update your question to include that you want to set up RAID, and the detail you've just explained.
– K7AAY – 2019-11-26T19:54:20.657
very very good information, thank you! so this means dynamic disks is bootable, but no TRIM, while storage spaces has trim but isn't bootable? Is there any way to create a 'pure' Software RAID 0 under windows? – user1282931 – 2019-11-26T20:36:45.133
Storage Spaces is bootable with the right BIOS/UEFI (example).
– harrymc – 2019-11-26T20:44:10.037I did see that thread, but it seems that's just something microsoft can pull off themselves, isn't it? – user1282931 – 2019-11-26T20:54:21.527
Microsoft does not make the UEFI firmware. This is done by the manufacturer of the motherboard. – harrymc – 2019-11-26T20:56:15.117
but afaik UEFI usually just knows Fat32 anyway and launches bootmanager, which is on a Fat32 disk. From there bootmanager knows how to handle NTFS for example and boots up Windows on an NTFS partition. So, wouldn't just bootmanager need to know how to handle storage spaces? – user1282931 – 2019-11-26T20:59:27.840
UEFI firmware incorporates drivers for FAT32 and NTFS. But Storage Spaces is much more complex and requires accessing much more Windows stuff such as the registry. Not every firmware has that (yet). – harrymc – 2019-11-26T21:05:59.520