RAID 1 of External Hard Drives

[Kartik Chopra]

Hello Everyone,

I have a simple question, for which I cannot find an answer to.

 

Can I make a Software RAID 1 drive using two external HDDs ?

 

To be more specific I want to make a RAID 1 array using two external hard drives, specifically Seagate backup plus slim 1tb (two drives), using windows in built drive partitioning tool.

I cannot seem to find the answer and do not want to buy a drive just for experimentation and without knowing the answer.

I have previously worked on RAID arrays using the above-mentioned windows tool, but they were internal 3.5" drives.

[nsinnott]

you should be able to create a logical volume from within windows... wouldn't be a RAID 1 array per se, but it would function like one

[Guest]

Using Storage Spaces it should be possible to achieve something close.

[kirashi]

11 minutes ago, Kartik Chopra said:

Hello Everyone,

I have a simple question, for which I cannot find an answer to.

 

Can I make a RAID 1 drive using two external HDDs ?

 

To be more specific I want to make a RAID 1 array using two external hard drives, specifically Seagate backup plus slim 1tb (two drives), using windows in built drive partitioning tool.

I cannot seem to find the answer and do not want to buy a drive just for experimentation and without knowing the answer.

I have previously worked on RAID arrays using the above-mentioned windows tool, but they were internal 3.5" drives.

Normally hardware RAID is not something one should or even can do over USB, because most USB HDD's have a bridging chipset between the SATA commands that the drives run off of and your USB chipset on your motherboard. As @nsinnott said, you might be able to create a logical volume in Disk Management, but I propose a better solution: Buy StableBit DrivePool and never worry about being unable to access your data.

 

StableBit DrivePool, and other drive pooling software such as Storage Spaces, allow you to add and remove drives on the fly without the same rebuild times or requirements that Hardware RAID needs, and are hardware agnostic. This means that if your computer asplodes, as long as your drives are intact, you can simply reinstall the software on ANY other computer that runs Windows (or whatever OS the software supports) and have access to your drive pool.

 

StableBit goes a step further, storing the drive pool inside a hidden folder on the root of any drives in the pool. This allows for data recovery on another system even without having to install StableBit DrivePool, and is what I use when I give 1 drive each of my 2-drive mirrored pool to neighbours for safekeeping when we're away on holidays. Windows own Storage Spaces might let you do this, however, I know that setting up stripped or mirrored logical disks in Disk Management does not and requires a rebuild if you lose one of the drives. You can't just plug the other drive of a mirrored logical drive array into a Linux live USB and recover data.

 

Worst case scenario is our house gets broken into and my PC gets stolen AND 1 of the neighbours houses burns down at the same time. Normally, my data would be gone because you'd need both drives to rebuild the pooled array, or rebuild the Hardware RAID array. However, because of the way StableBit stores files inside a hidden root folder, I could just go to my other neighbours house, pickup the singular remaining drive, and recover my data on any computer no problem.

 

*please note that I am not affiliated with StableBit, and have purchased DrivePool for myself to use with 2x 3TB HDDs and 2x 500GB SSDs in my personal computer.

[Kartik Chopra]

4 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Normally hardware RAID is not something one should or even can do over USB, because most USB HDD's have a bridging chipset between the SATA commands that the drives run off of and your USB chipset on your motherboard. As @nsinnott said, you might be able to create a logical volume in Disk Management, but I propose a better solution: Buy StableBit DrivePool and never worry about being unable to access your data.

 

StableBit DrivePool, and other drive pooling software such as Storage Spaces, allow you to add and remove drives on the fly without the same rebuild times or requirements that Hardware RAID needs, and are hardware agnostic. This means that if your computer asplodes, as long as your drives are intact, you can simply reinstall the software on ANY other computer that runs Windows (or whatever OS the software supports) and have access to your drive pool.

 

StableBit goes a step further, storing the drive pool inside a hidden folder on the root of any drives in the pool. This allows for data recovery on another system even without having to install StableBit DrivePool, and is what I use when I give 1 drive each of my 2-drive mirrored pool to neighbours for safekeeping when we're away on holidays. Windows own Storage Spaces might let you do this, however, I know that setting up stripped or mirrored logical disks in Disk Management does not and requires a rebuild if you lose one of the drives. You can't just plug the other drive of a mirrored logical drive array into a Linux live USB and recover data.

 

Worst case scenario is our house gets broken into and my PC gets stolen AND 1 of the neighbours houses burns down at the same time. Normally, my data would be gone because you'd need both drives to rebuild the pooled array, or rebuild the Hardware RAID array. However, because of the way StableBit stores files inside a hidden root folder, I could just go to my other neighbours house, pickup the singular remaining drive, and recover my data on any computer no problem.

 

*please note that I am not affiliated with StableBit, and have purchased DrivePool for myself to use with 2x 3TB HDDs and 2x 500GB SSDs in my personal computer.

Ok @kirashi don't logical volumes or storage spaces work the same way ?

From my previous experience if a drive in a mirrored volume set fails the computer marks the working one as "Failed Redundancy" and then I can replace the failed one and windows will resync.

 

Further just out of curiosity will a storage space virtual volume made on Windows 10 work with windows 7 ?

[kirashi]

Just now, Kartik Chopra said:

Ok @kirashi don't logical volumes or storage spaces work the same way ?

From my previous experience if a drive in a mirrored volume set fails the computer marks the working one as "Failed Redundancy" and then I can replace the failed one and windows will resync.

 

Further just out of curiosity will a storage space virtual volume made on Windows 10 work with windows 7 ?

Spot on regarding the way logical volumes or storage spaces work - they're rebuild on the same machine just fine. However, if your machine goes belly up, you can't simply plug a drive into another machine to have access to your data, so you'd still need to actually backup your files to a regular plain old hard drive or external drive. In my experience, I wasn't even able to move the drives from one machine to another and have Windows rebuild the logical volumes, so your kilometerage may vary.

 

Storage spaces created using Disk Management should work back to Windows 7, however, I don't believe spaces created using the new Storage Spaces location in Control Panel / Windows 10 Settings will as this was introduced in Windows 8.

[nsinnott]

18 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Spot on regarding the way logical volumes or storage spaces work - they're rebuild on the same machine just fine. However, if your machine goes belly up, you can't simply plug a drive into another machine to have access to your data, so you'd still need to actually backup your files to a regular plain old hard drive or external drive. In my experience, I wasn't even able to move the drives from one machine to another and have Windows rebuild the logical volumes, so your kilometerage may vary.

 

Storage spaces created using Disk Management should work back to Windows 7, however, I don't believe spaces created using the new Storage Spaces location in Control Panel / Windows 10 Settings will as this was introduced in Windows 8.

I have logical volumes set up through Disk Management that work just fine in other machines. The drives just have to be initialized and then I can access all the data just fine.

EDIT: just re-read your post and realized you were talking about one of the failed drives. *facepalm*