4 x 4TB WD-Blue - Which Raid Array?

[Snowwie88]

Hi guys,

I have here 4 hard drives, all 4TB and they are Western Digital Blue's. I do know these drives are not specifically made for a RAID setup, but I also can tell that the usage will be relative minimal. Reason for this is because I want to use them for my own home media server. This thing will be more off than on, because I only use it for media files, such as a whole bunch of movies and tv shows, also one copy of my backups (in a TrueCrypt container), my music collection (mostly flac) and installation files where necessary.

I am a bit struggling whether to choose between Raid 5 or JBOD, or even two sets of 2 drive in raid 0. I am just working with Windows 10, I am not a professional Windows server user. I do know that Windows 10 has a feature called Storage Spaces, but what I also read is that Raid 5 becomes less popular if the drives get bigger. The reason what is states, if one drive fails, than you better have not a singular problem on one of the other disks otherwise all your data is gone.
Furthermore with Raid 5 you loose 4TB of space.

Then JBOD comes into the picture. The data I have on the home media server is not the most important data (much of it can be redownloaded, but not everything). The thing with JBOD, if I create a spanned volume in Windows 10 it sees the 4 drives as a singular drive of 16TB. But what happens if one of the drives fail? What I read most is that you loose the data on that drive and the other drives keep their data. BUT, since those drives were part of an 'Array', even though JBOD is technically NOT an array, but just a stacking of drives into 1 singular drive, I wonder how the other non-affected drives can be approached without loosing data. Can these drive be converted back to individual drives with their own data on them intact? How would that work? The same question I would have with Raid 5. Raid 5 would allow restoration, but how is the procedure using a Storage Pool in Windows 10? I can't seem to find any option that says, "restore Storage Pool". Let's say I figured out which drive is failing, I remove it, insert a new one, and then what? Is there a feature in Windows 10 that allows to Storage Pool to be reconstructed? 

Considering my usage of this system, maybe being on for several hours per day, sometimes not running for 2 or 3 days. What is the best option? I already dismiss Raid 1 and Raid 6 since they will cost me half the storage space, which is not worth it.
- Raid 5

- JBOD

- 2 x Raid 0 (Creating two drives of each 8 TB)

What is best in a Windows 10 environment with these types of drives?






 

[aDoomGuy]

Well I've been using two SATA SSD in RAID 0 for a while and that works well. Not so much for the performance as it is to have them as a single volume. One annoying thing I can't find a way to see SMART data and such. That aside no complaints from me. I think I would go for the dual RAID 0 if I was you.

[Snowwie88]

The biggest issue I am facing is the method of recovery with both JBOD and Raid 5, I don't see any real comprehensible options within Windows 10 to do this and the chances of failure is still very big because these drive are not only 4TB in size, but they are also WD Blue, and those drives have not made to run in a Raid 5 configuration. I think JBOD would be no problem. 2 sets of Raid 0 would have the benefit of an easier trouble shoot, and I also know what data would be missing, raid 0 is also faster in both reading and writing and last but not least I would keep the entire 16TB of usable space.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Storage Devices

[TorC]

Why not RAID 10?  This was the ideal way back when SCSII RAID was the fastest thing around.  Stripe AND Mirror.  Assuming the disks are identical with the same firmware and all.  Just an idea.