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BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware
To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.
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Never used it, but conceptually it's the same idea, I think, as what Unraid does with storage. It's not block based redundancy, it's file based.
support.microsoft.com
Storage Spaces in Windows - Microsoft Support
Learn how to create new storage spaces, choose between mirror, two-way, and parity spaces, optimize drive usage, and remove a drive from a pool.
support.microsoft.com
I've been using it since the Windows 10 "Creator's Edition" when you could create a Storage Pool formatted with ReFS. I have a 3 column Parity Storage Space with ReFS over five hard drives.
It's working well so far, I had a WD Blue drive start complaining of bad sectors and was able to remove the bad drive and replace it with no problems other than WD sending me defective replacement drives 2 times
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The GUI for setting up the Pool and then Storage Space is very limited. You need to use PowerShell if you want to specify the number of columns and interleave. I have the commands saved if you (or anyone) is interested and they're easily found on the internets. Once you set up the type of Space that you want there's no changing it except for the sizeif you chose Thin Provisioning. You can always make it bigger never smaller. Thin Provisioning only takes up the space on the physical drives that the data is using, FIxed allocates the total specified space on the drives.
Simple Space ~ RAID0
2 Way Mirror ~ RAID1
Parity ~ RAID5
It's working well so far, I had a WD Blue drive start complaining of bad sectors and was able to remove the bad drive and replace it with no problems other than WD sending me defective replacement drives 2 times
.The GUI for setting up the Pool and then Storage Space is very limited. You need to use PowerShell if you want to specify the number of columns and interleave. I have the commands saved if you (or anyone) is interested and they're easily found on the internets. Once you set up the type of Space that you want there's no changing it except for the size
Simple Space ~ RAID0
2 Way Mirror ~ RAID1
Parity ~ RAID5
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I decided to give it a try with a couple random HDDs laying around. So far, it's not working out so well. First, I tried using two 2TB drives. One is WD and the other Seagate. They are old drives and had old data on them. After a lot of fiddling around (going into safe mode), I finally got a message that one drive couldn't be added to the pool (it said something about checking a cable). I canceled out and the WD drive was in a pool, so I deduced it was the Seagate drive that had the issue. It didn't surprise me, to be honest. I removed that one and swapped in a 4TB Seagate that was also just sitting around. Well, that one ended up not working either. Then, I hooked up a 4TB external Seagate drive. Guess what happened? It didn't work either. So, I'm not sure what the magic combo is for making it work, but I am not having a good go with it yet.
EDIT: After thinking about this more. Perhaps these drives were set aside for a reason.... I may have set them out because of various issues like excessive read times and SMART warnings.
EDIT: After thinking about this more. Perhaps these drives were set aside for a reason.... I may have set them out because of various issues like excessive read times and SMART warnings.
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Although it's supposed to deal with any drive and give the option to add a drive with data on it I've seen it fail too.
You could try to format the drive and maybe remove the drive letter then try to add it. That worked for me. Had to low level format a drive too to get it added; today's version of low level format.
You could try to format the drive and maybe remove the drive letter then try to add it. That worked for me. Had to low level format a drive too to get it added; today's version of low level format.
I use it on my main desktop and one backup server. It works great except for the issue with the Windows 10 May 2020 update, and this issue is fixed with the latest patches.
Ahhh, thanks for that.
I stayed away from updating because of that issue, then promptly forgot about checking back to see if it got fixed.
I've heard some bad stories of SS, but don't have experience, personally.
When I was looking at storage solutions for Windows, I found a tool called StableBit DrivePool that had a ton of great reviews and long-term users, at a fair price (I'm not affiliated, nor have I ever bought it -- it was just a very strong candidate in my short list of possible options). It's a file-level replicator with a nice GUI/etc. that may be worth your consideration.
When I was looking at storage solutions for Windows, I found a tool called StableBit DrivePool that had a ton of great reviews and long-term users, at a fair price (I'm not affiliated, nor have I ever bought it -- it was just a very strong candidate in my short list of possible options). It's a file-level replicator with a nice GUI/etc. that may be worth your consideration.
I had the StableBit page already bookmarked, but I've never actually tried their software. I am temped to try their drive pool software but Unraid is more tempting I think. Their cloud pool is interesting.. I remember emailing support at one time, to see if they offered a multi-PC sync, and as I recall they did not. (When @Steve was investigating sync options, I had thought that might work for him.) Also it would get expensive if you actually wanted it on multiple machines (I mean isn't that kind of the point of clouding?)
I see they have a new free service from the same backing company, https://bitflock.com/ . It reads the S.M.A.R.T. data from your system's drives and makes a nice web page about them https://bitflock.com/demo . I could see where they could potentially use machine learning or something to better understand what changing S.M.A.R.T. attributes really mean for a given drive.
Yeah, not sure how the licensing works. I was looking DrivePool as a 'NAS' type solution back when I was considering using Windows for a 'server', where I'd only need the $30-40 payment. I use InSync for OneDrive/etc., and they only charge "per account", so maybe the StabileBit wouldn't be so bad -- But, who knows.
I have not seen the SMART tool - I'll look into it - thanks!
I was playing with FreeNAS in a VM a few weeks ago. If Storage Spaces bites me I will be switching to that.
I'll have to get more RAM so I can run Windows 10 in a VM on top of it though.
I'll have to get more RAM so I can run Windows 10 in a VM on top of it though.
I have used FreeNAS, or more recently Nas4Free fork, for a couple of customers. I found it very reliable. One customer had a primary NAS used by the staff, and secondary (on site backup) NAS updated up by rsync every hour, and an offsite NAS backed up overnight from the secondary. The storage was upgraded from 80GB originally, to 500GB and then 4TB drives over a period of about 12 years. The main issue was scheduling a shutdown to clean the dust out.
FreeNAS was based on BSD, but the soon to be released TrueNAS product is moving to Linux. " TrueNAS Minis will ship with the latest Stable version of FreeNAS until TrueNAS CORE is released in October "
The TrusNAS boxes appear to be purpose built NAS's. For my customers, I have just re-used old PC's. I think a couple of them were still running Pentium 4 processors with about 2GB RAM. It still supported about 30 users! Those boxes must have been at least 15 years old before they were replaced.
I think the non custom hardware version (i.e. OS only) is called TrueNAS Core or something? Maybe this is useful: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/07/an-easy-mode-for-zfs-we-test-the-truenas-core-12-0-beta/
I've been using Storage Spaces on Windows Server 2016 now 2019. It works quite well. I have four 4TB drives with a 500GB SSD running as a cache for the pool. The volume is set up to provide mirrored storage. It's quite reliable and I've only had self-induced issues. PowerShell is your friend for some operations. I use NTFS on it so that Azure Backup can work. It's odd that Azure Backup can't work on ReFS but I think ReFS has very targeted usage such as hosting VMs.
A question, if you don't mind.
In the Server Storage Space management stuff is there a way to change out a bad ssd cache and keep the rest of the pool intact?
As we know, Storage Spaces for windows 10 is a pale shadow of what it is in the server editions. With a lot of searching you can sometimes find a way to "make it work" in Windows 10.
I found forum postings of some people who got a tiered setup (ssd cache and some hdd's) on Win10. In a VM I followed their steps and was able to get it assembled and working. I think I used the drives in Parity. I was able to remove the hdd's and then add new ones (from the VM settings) and it re-built itself the way it's supposed to. I then removed the ssd, because they sometimes go bad, and Storage Spaces threw some kind of fit. It ended with a reboot and when it came back up I had a pool that I couldn't access and the drive letter was there but with no used or free space on it. I poked around some more and ended up deleting the VM.
I left it at that and never looked any more. Your post got me thinking again.
I've only used Storage Spaces on Windows Server but there are a lot of PowerShell examples out there which should help manage drives on Windows 10 implementations. Search for Get-PhysicalDisk, Get-StoragePool and Remove-PhysicalDisk. I found this article quite helpful:
www.hyper-v.io
Once you get it running with the devices you're happy with, check out the PowerShell command Optimize-StoragePool. That will get Windows to rebalance the file storage among the drives.
Replacing a Failed Physical Disk on S2D
About Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) what introduced in Microsoft Server 2016 (Datacenter Edition), what gives highly available and easily scalable software-defined storage systems.
www.hyper-v.io
Once you get it running with the devices you're happy with, check out the PowerShell command Optimize-StoragePool. That will get Windows to rebalance the file storage among the drives.
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