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I have some old hard disks that I want to get as much out of them as possible for space. Currently, I have:
2 x 200 GB HDD
2 x 500 GB HDD
2 x 1.0 TB HDD
1 x 1.5 TB HDD
If I combine them as this table, using RAID 5:
HDD : (1) : (2) : (3)
200 GB : 200GB : 0 GB : 0 GB
200 GB : 200GB : 0 GB : 0 GB
1.0 TB : 200GB : 800GB : 0 GB
1.0 TB : 200GB : 800GB : 0 GB
1.5 TB : 200GB : 800GB : 500GB
500 GB : 0 GB : 0 GB : 500GB
500 GB : 0 GB : 0 GB : 500GB
This result in 3 RAID 5 volumes, using all available space. But to not destroy the 1.5 TB HDD by striping, I want to span the 3 RAID arrays into one big array, resulting in a 3.4 TB volume with 1 disk fail security.
How would i go about doing that in Windows Server 2012? I know how to make the arrays, but not how to combine them.
pjensen68321
Posted 2014-08-06T22:05:51.517
Reputation: 11
1Why RAID5? Why not just use Windows Storage Spaces? Add all the drives to a storage space, and using parity mode. Storage spaces is specifically designed to make full use of lots of devices that aren't identical. – Zoredache – 2014-08-06T22:53:09.900
Ive heard alot about this storage spaces not working correctly, etc. using to much space, and not optimizing the space correctly, also if i where to fill up the space and wanted to add more, i have to add at least two or something, where with normal raid i could just add one, also i like to have control :) but i guess i could play some more with it and figure out how to set it up and how efficient it really is. – pjensen68321 – 2014-08-07T09:31:16.710
There is no way this can be done??? I have done it in ubuntu server, but i want the Hyper-V virtual machine stuff aswell. I don't trust storage spaces, some know of a test on bigger drives? – pjensen68321 – 2014-08-07T14:04:54.653
About the closest thing you could do is just setup your 3 RAID5 volumes, and then just mount them all on the same drive letter at various paths. Windows doesn't let you layer software RAID volumes on top of other software RAID volumes. – Zoredache – 2014-08-07T16:42:55.360
I was thinking about something like make the 3 raids and then install ubuntu server as a virtual machine and mount the raids to it, and them span it in ubuntu, but that would create a lot of overhead and is not very pretty, and properly also difficult to maintain. – pjensen68321 – 2014-08-07T16:53:58.810
While I think the idea is silly, if you were going to setup a VM, I would use a hypervisor that supports passing the raw devices into the VM. Then just do everything with Linux.
– Zoredache – 2014-08-07T17:17:38.370Any idea how the performance on this is? i was thinking of putting a virtual gaming computer on the big drive... hmm i think this is going to be very messy... – pjensen68321 – 2014-08-07T19:20:28.617
LOL, you think you can get this to actually have any level of performance? That is funny. No this kind of Frankenstein RAID in a VM will suck as far as performance. I doubt there is anyway you can use this bunch of miss-matched drives and actually have it perform well. – Zoredache – 2014-08-07T19:25:43.047
yea, i did guess that there wouldn't be any big performance to gain, but i could be lucky :) what about storage spaces, does it have the performance to have a gaming VM run on it? – pjensen68321 – 2014-08-07T19:49:40.410