Setting up Raid 5 and Sharing drive between PCs

[Moonzy]

i have a 2TB toshiba drive, 2TB WD Blue, and 3TB WD green, i would like to run raid 5 on them, is it possible and recommended?

 

if it's possible:

1) is this the right way to do it?

Spoiler

 

2) how do i rebuild the array when i reinstall my OS?

3) how do i add more drives to the array? same step as 2)?

  3a) i think it's possible to add smaller or larger capacity drive to the array? just that the largest disk might have wasted space (ie 2+2+3+1 ~= 5TB, 2+2+3+3 ~= 7TB?)

4) how do i make it so the array shows up on my other PC on the network as a hard disk in file explorer?

[Electronics Wizardy]

 

1. Yea storage spaces is the best way to go on windows 10.

 

2. It will just show up when you move it to anouther compatabile system(so windows 10)

 

3. You can just add more drives to the pool and then expand the virtual disk.

 

3a. Storage spaces isn't a traditional raid so you can mix sizes. THis depeds on the exact config, but by defualt its 1 parity for every 2 data chucks, so with 2+2+3+1 you should get about 2.3 tb usable

 

4. Under folder properties, then sharing you can share the folder for others to use

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, BlueScope819 said:

1. No. Don't use Windows RAID. It's not proper raid. Buy a RAID card when then exposes the array, fully done and protected, to the system.

2. 1. prevents this. You don't.

3. Depends on the RAID card. You may need to reformat the entire RAID array

3a. Yes, the smaller disks will have wasted space but you want spares so you can have the 3tb WD green as a spare and the 2tb Toshiba and 2tb WD blue in RAID 1 with the WD green as a hot spare, you can't do much with 3 drives/

4. Just make it a network share.

storage spaces is a pretty good software raid setup, think of it like zfs. Its better in features than most raid cards.

 

Most raid cards allow online expansion of raid arrays.

 

 

[Moonzy]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

2+2+3+1 you should get about 2.3 tb usable

wha? how about 2+2+3? i need about 4TB of storage for now

5 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

It's not proper raid.

can it prevent data loss if one of my drive fail? that's all im asking for

5 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

you can have the 3tb WD green as a spare and the 2tb Toshiba and 2tb WD blue in RAID 1 with the WD green as a hot spare, you can't do much with 3 drives/

i need 4TB of storage space in a single array with redundancy, thats why im looking at raid 5

5 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

Just make it a network share.

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Under folder properties, then sharing you can share the folder for others to use

i'll explore this right now, thanks!

 

edit: oh i forgot to mention, there are multiple people on the network and i only want to share between my own PC

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Moonzy said:

wha? how about 2+2+3? i need about 4TB of storage for now

rip math, 2.3 is wrong

 

2+2+3 should give you 4tb usable, adding a 1tb drive will give you more space.

 

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

can it prevent data loss if one of my drive fail? that's all im asking for

Yup it will do that.

 

One thing to note is storage spaces parity is known for slow write speeds(about 60mB/s). There are some tweaks, but its not great.

[OIIOOIOI]

Do you have a clean 10GB LAN between both PC (CAT 7 and fitting switches/routers) ? Otherwise it wouldnt make much sense cause large files will take too long to download from your NAS PC to the client PC at terrabyte scale. If yes, heres some basic info for you : https://www.devroom.io/2020/02/28/building-a-diy-home-server-with-freenas/

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

storage spaces parity is known for slow write speeds(about 60mB/s)

im cool with that, mostly archiving and more reading than writing

 

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

rip math, 2.3 is wrong

any approximation for 2+2+3+1 and 2+2+3+3?

 

1 minute ago, OIIOOIOI said:

Do you have a clean 10GB LAN between both PC

i have 1Gb link between my main desktop and router, as well as my secondary PC, it should be enough for what i do

3 minutes ago, OIIOOIOI said:

heres some basic info for you : https://www.devroom.io/2020/02/28/building-a-diy-home-server-with-freenas/

i would like both PC to stick on the windows platform if possible

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

any approximation for 2+2+3+1 and 2+2+3+3?

2+2+2+3, probably about 6tb

 

Want me to test this for you, I have the drives and a system, it might take a few hours though

 

 

[Moonzy]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Want me to test this for you, I have the drives and a system, it might take a few hours though

no it's fine, as long as it's more than 4TB then im good

 

so i've been looking at this page and i allowed one of my test hard disk to be shared over the network

but when i key in the network path in file explorer, im prompted to key in credentials, which i dont think i have set any password on my desktop, so idk what to key in

 

also how to limit the share to only myself as i share my network with few people

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, BlueScope819 said:

18 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

 

Timestamped for you.

He is probably talking about the disk management raid, this is much different than storage spaces.

 

Also is linus really the best guy to be quoting for how to do storage correctly? There have been many video about non optimal storage setups he has done. I know many places are using stoage spaces without issues in big storage arrays.

[Moonzy]

6 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

im prompted to key in credentials

 

like... what do i even key in? i didnt set any password to my desktop

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, BlueScope819 said:

Okay, sorry for taking the advice of the person that this forum is named after.

I mean the guy posted this

Not only did he not have backups(big non no)

 

Thats was a very bad config.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

 

like... what do i even key in? i didnt set any password to my desktop

Set the password of the server pc, so the desktop.

 

You normally need a password to do it, or give access to everyone.

[Moonzy]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Set the password of the server pc, so the desktop.

 

You normally need a password to do it, or give access to everyone.

basically a windows login screen password?

 

sorry for sounding like a totally incompetent person but this is really not my cup of tea

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

basically a windows login screen password?

 

sorry for sounding like a totally incompetent person but this is really not my cup of tea

yea give it the username and password you login with.

[Moonzy]

26 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

yea give it the username and password you login with.

after some PM-ing (because of credentials and stuffs) i got it working

now i just have to find time to move the data on the drives and setup the raid and i should be good to go

 

thanks @Electronics Wizardy very much for your help

again i apologise for sounding like a noob, but networking stuffs is really out of my hands

also thanks @BlueScope819 for the info too