How to increase only my storage space

[Genghis Schlong]

   Hi, I'm new to servers but cannot find any helpful guide to using multiple hard drive without using raid to help keep my data safe. HELP!!

 

For example if I had 5 8TB hard drives how could I create a 40TB volume? This is just an example btw.

 

• Failing drives is not a big concern
• Lost data is not a concern
• Speed of the data transfer is not a concern as long as I can stream a low resolution video

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just so you know "keeping data safe" and not setting aside space for redundancy or error correction don't really go hand in hand.

 

You can either set it up as a RAID 0 or a JBOD. However I think even a JBOD volume has the same reliability problem as RAID 0, as in if one drive goes, the entire thing goes.

 

EDIT: If you want data protection that uses the least amount of space, RAID5 fits the bill. With RAID5  you give up 1/5 (or generally speaking, 1/[number of drives]) of your total space, but you can lose one drive without the entire thing going down.

[Oshino Shinobu]

22 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Just so you know "keeping data safe" and not setting aside space for redundancy or error correction don't really go hand in hand.

 

You can either set it up as a RAID 0 or a JBOD. However I think even a JBOD volume has the same reliability problem as RAID 0, as in if one drive goes, the entire thing goes.

 

EDIT: If you want data protection that uses the least amount of space, RAID5 fits the bill. With RAID5  you give up 1/5 (or generally speaking, 1/[number of drives]) of your total space, but you can lose one drive without the entire thing going down.

JBOD doesn't stripe data, so theoretically you can lose a drive and only lost what was stored on that drive. Typically, spanning formats such as JBOD should fill one disk before writing to the next, so a single disk failure shouldn't result in any loss of data on other drives. 

 

Windows spanned volume would work. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

JBOD doesn't stripe data, so theoretically you can lose a drive and only lost what was stored on that drive. Typically, spanning formats such as JBOD should fill one disk before writing to the next, so a single disk failure shouldn't result in any loss of data on other drives.

I think it depends on how the controller implemented it. I have an external enclosure that has a JBOD mode, but if you use it and format the drives for JBOD, it demands both drives be in the enclosure to use it. And when trying to access the drives elsewhere, it shows up as unreadable

[Oshino Shinobu]

9 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

I think it depends on how the controller implemented it. I have an external enclosure that has a JBOD mode, but if you use it and format the drives for JBOD, it demands both drives be in the enclosure to use it. And when trying to access the drives elsewhere, it shows up as unreadable

I believe the data is stored on drives in full, but you can't remove one drive and use it somewhere else, or continue using the array/volume if a drive fails. You can go in with recovery software and pull the files. 

 

I'm not sure of the particular differences between JBOD and spanned volumes though, so they may function slightly differently. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I believe the data is stored on drives in full, but you can't remove one drive and use it somewhere else, or continue using the array/volume if a drive fails. You can go in with recovery software and pull the files. 

 

I'm not sure of the particular differences between JBOD and spanned volumes though, so they may function slightly differently. 

In Linux, if you use JBOD (or linear mode), there's a note saying if one drive dies, the entire thing dies: https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup#Linear_mode

 

Though this makes sense. The file system would be expecting the space where the disk that died to exist and if it doesn't or finds out, it's going to throw up a bunch of red flags.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, Mira Yurizaki said:

In Linux, if you use JBOD (or linear mode), there's a note saying if one drive dies, the entire thing dies: https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup#Linear_mode

 

Though this makes sense. The file system would be expecting the space where the disk that died to exist and if it doesn't or finds out, it's going to throw up a bunch of red flags.

Yeah, I think the array will become inaccessible to the OS, but you can pull file (though that's really not a great way to have to do it). 

 

At least with RAID 5, as you mentioned earlier, it can be re-built, though with 8TB drives, it's going to add a fairly large cost to getting the same capacity as a JBOD setup.