Kriz

I'm aware of AME but for the sake of stability and ease of keeping OS secure I would prefer latest IoT LTSC build of Windows 10. While Microsoft treats it's regular clients as garbage they at least respect their corporate clients and you can actually get ad free, lightweight, fairly bloat free and rock stable distro of Windows. As far as I can tell LTSC branch also respect settings to block telemetry and data collection. Besides I don't know weather AME will be able to use extended support to 2032 or will it expire with the end of mainstream support. There is AME for 11 but downgrading to Windows 11 is a last resort. Ps. It's not that I don't like Windows. I've been using this system in almost every version since early 90's and I respect it's stellar compatibility, hardware support and almost unbelievable amount of software that without any updates can often work even if it's decades old. My problem is squarely with Microsoft and their latest policy of screwing their users over (though it might have always been their policy and I have only realized it now). Linux might be frustrating, unfinished and difficult but at least people behind it usually have your best interest at hearth.

I have some experience with Linux. I operate a home DNS server with piHole, played around in VM's, used docker and even tried it on my main machine. Though with that I had hurdles from the start cause there was same bugs in the BIOS making Linux unbootable until issues were fixed. When that got resolved I find myself struggling with minute details that would take a second on Windows. So I kinda know what a pain it can be but KDE at least did everything I wanted it to do not to mention I didn't had to debloat or despook my OS. Damn if only Microsoft stuck to making the same operating system they were making in the 90's I wouldn't think about alternatives but things such as ads in OS, telemetry, bloat and poor updates not to mention changes to desktop environment you can't op out of are getting worse and worse. To try Linux one last time I need at least one thing to work fairly easily. Switching my living room setup on (LG OLED and my AVR) and switching off displays in my office. In windows it's easy with DisplayFusion but last time I have tried Kubuntu there simply was no easy way to do it that's why I went back to Windows 10. If I don't find what I'm looking for at least Windows 10 2021 IoT LTSC has still plenty of gas left in the tank maybe by that time there will be alternatives.

With WindowBlinds 11 and Start11 I probably could get Windows 11 to look bearable but I would still have to deal with updates (mostly feature updates that changes things and often breaks things) and inferior folder previews witch for someone working with lots of photos is very useful. Windows 10 IoT LTSC seams like the best version of Windows right now. Alternatively I could wait for Windows 11 LTSC. Ps. My issue with Windows 11 design is Mica. They added it in Windows 11 but in classic Microsoft fashion instead of making Mica show up everywhere by default like Aero Glass back in the day it's limited to updated apps if dev adds it or new UWP apps nobody likes making Windows look even more inconsistent and disjointed especially now when they are killing accent colors. So far WinAero Tweaker still works but it' can stop working after any update. I have Windows 11 on my home server and without WindowBlinds I can't get it to look the way I want,

Hi Since Windows 10 was supposed to be my last version of Windows I have two choices : go for Windows 10 2021 IoT LTSC and prolong it's life to at least 2029 or try Linux one more time. Problem is I'm mostly a gamer with a rather high end setup and I also use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. For adobe apps I could just dual boot to Windows 10 but for daily use I should use up to date OS. So what I need is a gaming ready system with support for HDR displays and a way to quickly switch active and inactive monitors to switch my station (I have a dual monitor setup and LG OLED B9 couch setup with Dolby Atmos Home Theather system with it's dedicated keyboard and mouse). Currently I use DisplayFusion to quickly switch from my desk setup to couch setup (enable one set of monitors and disable another) there is no DisplayFusion for Linux. Is there a way to achieve this or is my best bet is to stay on Windows 10 for a few more years ? Ps. Windows 11 is not an option for me it's ugly, less customizable and inconsistent in it's design not to mention even more spooky than Windows 10. I don't want it on my main PC.

I don't have a Microsoft account connected to my PC, I don't have Google account connected to my phone. I will not use light bulbs that need an account. So I guess I will have to get clever with the use of electrical switches and extension cords. Thanks anyway.

Hi I was always interested in mood lighting but with single color pure electric bulbs I hardly ever used it. I was planning to use Philips Hue bulbs but with announcement that it will require account even for local use I'm glad I haven't invested in this brands lighting. The problem is what now ? My needs are not massive one maybe two rooms, 5 rgb bulbs (6 at most) power state support when there is lack of electricity and easy way to turn lights on and off and change modes with some sort of wall mounted remote. From LTT videos I'm aware of Zigbee but with so many manufacturers and plain false advertising it's not easy to find something that will work the way you want. And as much as I want fancy atmospheric lighting I don't want to be left without lights when my Internet connection drops out or proverbial eye of Sauron notices me and I get my account suspended for some bs reason. If anyone uses such solution that work the way I have described it would help a lot to get some consumer advice. Oh and easy availability in Eastern Europe would be great cause that's where I live. I have good Ethernet and Wi-Fi coverage in my house BTW. Thanks for any tips in advance.

Well if there is performance scaling with the number of disks that's about what the performance should be so it's no that bad to go by in lack of practical testing on actual hardware. My current write speeds are fine for 5 disks but obviously if I double the disk count you would expect to see proportional performance scaling at least on reads and hopefully on writes as well.

Once again thanks for all the testing. 500 MB/s write would be good enough for me so I think I'm gonna stick with 4TB drives and keep expanding my array to hopefully one day get to maxing out my home server HDD capacity. Still this knowledge will be useful in the future. Energy cost in eastern Europe is through the roof with war and all but I operate my server more or less as a standard Windows PC with daily power cycles so hard drive longevity is in the end a bigger concern. Thanks guys for the help as always !

Damn that was a lot more detailed than I was expecting. I would lie if I said I understand everything now but hey that never stopped me before form tinkering. So what would be a sensible upgrade path then ? I have 5x4TB Toshiba n300 (16K interleave as far as I have tested the smallest PowerShell will allow and 64K AUS to have some efficiency with my limited testing this setup proved sufficient for decent speeds) . My plan was to if need be create another Space with 3x4TB n300's and when even more space would be needed add two more drives and merge all of this disks into 10x4TB n300'3 with dual parity to not only conserve but hopefully improve write speed (currently I'm getting about 270 - 350 MB/s usually on the high end on this range). That would necessitate backing up everything and rebuilding I'm well aware of that. But as @Electronics Wiza pointed out it requires twice the power for twice the storage. Speed however should be a lot better on reads especially. But if I could strategically add disks to existing pool without loosing any performance that would be a preferable path until I got close to 10 disks at which point I would make sense to rebuild array from scratch as dual parity space. What's your take on that ? Oh and thanks for time you spend testing couldn't do it myself.

Well my NAS is mostly for big file transfers to and from my main PC (hence I'm using 10 GbE adapters as a p2p connection in addition to general 1GbE access for all other devices) so no heavy IO operations. So for additional disks to be utilize I have to use disk optimization to relocate data across physical disks ? @Electronics Wiza is pointing out that you can even use different size disks. I get how unRAID works (with biggest parity drives and basically span data structure across data disks) so there it will work but in Storage Spaces and data striping ? What if you filled up your array and the size of the smallest drive what then ? And what about the parity data. At least with mismatched columns/physical disks I have some idea how it might work. Oh and another question. I know that GUI will not let you do a dual parity space without at least 7 columns but what about PowerShell will it be possible there or is it some hard coded minimum ? For 4TB disks and 5 of them dual parity is probably overkill but for 8TB drives I would feel much better with dual parity even at the cost of storage efficiency. My justification flawed it may be was to instead using 3 x 8TB drives use 5 x 4TB drives for better speed (and speed is quite important for me) but I didn't factor in the need for further expansion and it will definitely be needed down the line so since I need time to put aside money and hardware to make an upgrade I'd like to plan ahead. Better start now rather than later. If I use let's say 8TB drive will the array let me use this last 4TB that isn't reflected in smaller disks or will this space be reserved for additional parity until all other disks will be replaced with equal/larger drives ? I can't imagine how data can be pulled from 4 stripes at once form 4 different disks when all other disks are much smaller ? Ps. I Imagine parity space with 5 columns and 6 disks works something like that : 1 2 3 4 5 6 a b c d p p2 a b c p a2 d a b p b2 c d a p c2 b c d p d2 a b c d a2 a b c d p Numbers represent physical disks letters represent columns and stripes (a-d data, p parity and a2-d1 and p2 being a second layer of stripes to utilize full space without compromising performance. I might be dead wrong but I can't imagine different way it could work.

That's interesting. So if I add a 6th drive to the pool and optimize usage (to spread data equally over all disks) the data would still be read from 4 data stripes and written with 4 data stripes + parity but some stripes will be offset by one disk in an alternating pattern so performance can stay the same and additional drive's capacity can be used effectively ? I'm not sure weather I'm sufficiently clear how I'm imagine this but I hope you get the gist of it. That would be a good news. If I needed just a few gigs of extra space adding a new drive would be easy and I still have a free sata port on the same controller but I was afraid that the trick to get good write performance would stop working. . I was afraid you gonna say this. I will eventually have to get one of this cards but newer 16 port models are quite pricey like this one https://www.ebay.com/itm/404443071143?hash=item5e2aaf82a7:g:fFoAAOSwNGdjrEIY&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA8PUyDw8VKH5rWKGcPC8Y8sX1DcXNpwhNRZhag62tkNnyq6SNIiB2Jfg9%2F2DZlNvfhOGK4jfLGRd1SrIq8tGKrdbpiyq5lNNDs0pUZ0UzW3EByV9UOOcnIbxSrbaxthTZyC2t%2BtwiTUFojJjsIx7AxfKB2L%2Bv9pO9ldsfe0ctcAOHIg98FMu4Ijxl2kOcDvmvFQiMChafnLzkCXsCVb%2Fp7ekRNx0YLoe7WPSHIZOcJ8SzCyKEHqvRA4poK30NhIije2ZFZ2RSbXPC%2F6ZStcy0TAH%2Bv1ixBC0pv2f%2FOYbqTwpaIYnEY6KZ84eP3G6pueY9nw%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR7TqlcHaYg.

My CPU is Core i3 4330. With single parity CPU usage is well under control so there should be plenty of headroom. If need be I could get 4790k but I would rather keep it for something else. I know that Storage Spaces are quite flexible but if you want to keep your data I'm pretty sure number of columns and interleave size is fixed so I'm not sure what would happen when I would add a 6th disk to the array. Would it work (probably) would it perform well (rather unlikely cause cause with 5 stripes 4 data and 1 parity interleave size would perfectly translate to AUS you can format your array to) but I haven't test that so that's pure speculation. So I think the only thing you can do to keep your write performance is update and verify your backup, nuke the array and start from scratch witch double the amount of disks and new PowerShell settings. One more question do you have any HBA cards (about 8 SATA devices would suffice) from a reputable brand like LSI ? There is plenty of this stuff around but finding correct gear is not easy especially when manufacturers often provide conflicting information in different places. Doing my own research I found LSI SAS 9205-8i H220 HBA card. It's not enough on it's own to do 10 drives (without some SATA multiplayers) but with Storage spaces using two controllers shouldn't be a problem Oh and once again thanks for all the help along the way ! It was a big help to get my foot through the door.

Thanks for correction.

Hi Thanks to this forum and users @leadeater and @Electronics Wizardy I have successfully deployed 14TB Windows 11 parity storage spaces. 5 columns, 16KB interleave, 64KB AUS, 5x 4TB Toshiba n300. Performance is from good to great on read (500 - 800 MB/s) on writes it's a little slower but still acceptable (270 - 350 MB/s). It works good for now but as a compulsive tech enthusiast I already think about upgrade path. Obvious way is to evacuate data to backup and double the hdd count (when I will need more space) and make it a dual parity Storage Space. My question is how will write speed scale ? Read will most definitely double on lower and higher end but what about writes. Parity calculations will be more complex with two parity stripes. Also is there a way to control RAM write cache ? During file transfer I can see that it is working but it stops fairly quickly and there is plenty of ram left in my system (16 GB and 10 GB being free most of the time). I know there is an option in device manager to dissable write cache buffer flushing for each of the disk also in PowerShell you can tell Storage Spaces that server is power protected but how effective would that be for write speed improvement ? I don't own a UPS but if gain would be significant I would consider buying one. Thanks for all the help everyone !

Yes I'm aware of that that's why I'm replacing consumer drives with NAS drives for my server and than I will reuse those consumer drives as BitLocker protected cold stored backup. With time I will probably make another offsite backup as well but hard drive are not cheep so it will take time. The reason I'm concern about mixing BitLocker and Storage Spaces are some comments I read online but I always want to verify those kind of information with people better informed than I am cause bad takes and falsehoods are plentiful online. Thanks for clarifying.