Is spanned or striped volume more safe and reliable?

[cwgzz]

I can’t seem to find anything on Google about this. I know that striped volume offers better R/W speed since the data is stored on hard drives as if it’s one hard drive… but I can’t seem to find anything if striped or spanned is safer? 
 

in terms of wearing out the life span of a hard drive, is spanned or striped better? That’s what I really want to know? Does spanned or striped causes a failed hard drive faster? I’m not sure how to ask this question but hope someone can understand. Thank you 

[Skiiwee29]

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[Electronics Wizardy]

Neither will affect life span of the hdd much.

 

The spanned lets you mix drive size, the stripped gives you better speed. With both if one drive dies you lose all the data.

 

Id also suggest using storage spaces in windows normally.

[cwgzz]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

With both if one drive dies you lose all the data.

I have been doing a bunch of research on this and it seems that only using a striped volume will result in losing all of my data if one HD fails because it splits data on both drives. 
 

But using a spanned volume, I won’t lose all my data if one HD fails. A spanned volume works by filling up the first HD first, then once there’s no more storage, it’ll then start using the second HD. So if one HD fails, I can still get the data from the HD that didn’t fail. 

[Arika]

Neither method will impact the live of the drive in any observable way.

 

You always have the risk of if 1 drive died, you may lose access to everything depending on how it's written.

 

Just keep them as separate volumes.

[Arika]

1 minute ago, cwgzz said:

But using a spanned volume, I won’t lose all my data if one HD fails. A spanned volume works by filling up the first HD first, then once there’s no more storage, it’ll then start using the second HD. So if one HD fails, I can still get the data from the HD that didn’t fail. 

yes, but any spanned data across the drives will be affected if the first drive dies. depending on the types of files written, you may not be able to access them again by simply plugging it into another PC and just pulling the data off.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, cwgzz said:

t using a spanned volume, I won’t lose all my data if one HD fails. A spanned volume works by filling up the first HD first, then once there’s no more storage, it’ll then start using the second HD. So if one HD fails, I can still get the data from the HD that didn’t fail. 

Nope you still lose all the data with a spanned volume. Its doing it on a block level, not a file level. Recovery might be a bit easier, but you should never rely on file recovery.

 

If you want to have it so if one drive fails you only lose have the data, just have seperate drives. You can make it look like one with something like drivepool.

[cwgzz]

6 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Neither method will impact the live of the drive in any observable way.

So the chances of a HD failing using a spanned or striped volume is the same as just one HD on its own storage failing? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

19 minutes ago, cwgzz said:

So the chances of a HD failing using a spanned or striped volume is the same as just one HD on its own storage failing? 

Yup, or very close. Hdds should last many years under normal use.

[aramini]

Quote

 A spanned volume works by filling up the first HD first, then once there’s no more storage, it’ll then start using the second HD

 

Spanning

In theory yes. But the two (or more drives) are presented to the OS as one big drive (volume), so who knows where it actually writes what. I think it would depend on the OS's implementation of spanning. I personally don't see a good use case in the modern day for using spanning.

 

Is it really that hard to just install or store files on the other drive. Is it really that annoying to see C: 1TB and D: 1TB or sda 1TB, sdb 1TB in the OS as opposed to C: 2TB or sda 2TB in the OS? Spanning just lumps the space into one logical drive/volume and presents that to the OS. It is more of an organizational scheme.

Spanning comes from the old days when drives were much smaller, so you could pool them together into one larger drive to install large applications or databases, on a server that many people would access. I don't see much benefit or point in pooling storage these days, at least not without having redundancy. Most Enterprises use some form of RAID these days.

 

Striping

Assuming 2 drives (there could be more), striping writes block 1 to drive 1, then block 2 to drive 2, then block 3 to drive 1, block 4 to drive 2, etc... It is used for performance purposes, but it is risky because there is no redundancy.

 

With modern, fast and large SSD or nvme drives, there isn't really much of a point to use striping (to get redundancy, use RAID 10 instead) in a single user system. Are you planning on running, tuning and optimizing a massive database to be served out to the planet or something? If not, it isn't going to make your Call of Duty run that much faster on modern hardware lol.

 

The point of real RAID is redundancy. Striping by itself is not redundant. Lose a drive, lose all the data.

 

Neither configurations seem "safe" to me.

 

Perhaps try googling "RAID levels", "understanding RAID", or "how RAID works". You'll get tons of information.

 

Unless you are only concerned with R/W performance (probably negligible in a modern, single user, home system) and not concerned about redundancy (and make frequent backups) go ahead, use striping. If you want "safety" use  RAID 1 (mirror), RAID 10 (mirror with striping) or RAID 5 (striping with parity) as these RAID modes can recover from the loss of a drive. Let's be honest, all drives will eventually fail, whether it be a spinning disk, USB flash drive, SSD or Nvme. It's a matter of when, not if. (Murphy's law says it will be at the worst, most unexpected time too lol).

 

Also, RAID is NOT backup, so you should always still have and utilize a good backup strategy regardless of the drive or RAID configuration you decide to use.

 

Again, IMHO, Spanning and Striping are practically useless for most cases. Especially for a single user, home system. 

[aramini]

On 8/31/2021 at 9:05 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yup, or very close. Hdds should last many years under normal use.

Maybe in a home, single-user system under low workloads. Enterprise is a totally different situation, drives fail all the time in Storage Array Systems under heavy load. Hence the reason why those Enterprise Storage Systems use RAID and can cost millions of dollars.

[aramini]

On 8/31/2021 at 8:45 PM, cwgzz said:

So the chances of a HD failing using a spanned or striped volume is the same as just one HD on its own storage failing? 

Depends on the workload. The more a drive is read/written to (especially true of traditional spinning disks) the more heat and stress on the drive, which ultimately leads to drive failure. Drives are going to fail, it's a fact of life. I wouldn't be paranoid about it.

 

The more important concern would not be so much about the impact on the life of the drive, but rather how easily and quickly a drive failure can be mitigated without any data loss.

 

Thus, a good backup strategy and perhaps a fault tolerant setup (some form of RAID) would be appropriate.