New user questions
 
Notifications
Clear all

New user questions

6 Posts
2 Users
0 Likes
1,810 Views
(@roscoe)
Posts: 23
Member
Topic starter
 

Just bought a 4-drive OWC Thunderbolt 3 enclosure that I wish to use in RAID 0 (external backups). Have some noob questions regarding volumes waiting on the hardware to arrive (I have previous NAS experience but have heard some contradictory info from OWC tech support regarding the following).

1) Can I create multiple RAID 0 volumes such that each one can be managed as a separate drive? (Cleaner logistics for making backups by matching the volume size to the USB backup drive)

2) I'm starting with two drives (budget) and will add two more later (they'll be the same type/size drives). It's my understanding that SoftRAID will stripe across all four drives for faster access, but if I create the initial volume(s) with two drives, what happens to the striping on the existing two drives when I add more? Does SoftRAID push existing data to the additional drives to take advantage of the 4-drive speed?

Forget my other questions...will add them when I recall them :)

 
Posted : 03/05/2020 4:46 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8005
Member Admin
 

SoftRAID lets you create as many volumes as you want. Each will behave independently. The last volume will be slower than the others.

No, you cannot add more drives to a RAID 0 volume. You will need to delete it and create a new volume when you are ready.

 
Posted : 03/05/2020 10:44 pm
(@roscoe)
Posts: 23
Member
Topic starter
 

So if I understand, if my first two drives are 12TB each, I can create one 24 TB RAID 0 volume, or I can create 3 volumes at 8TB each (just an example). But a two-disk volume won't access as fast as a four disk volume, correct? So to maximize speed I should wait for the other two drives or rebuild the raid (which will wipe out my data).

Please clarify "The last volume will be slower than the others". Why is this? What if I have only one volume covering the entire 4-drive enclosure?

Thanks!

 
Posted : 04/05/2020 10:43 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8005
Member Admin
 

Yes a 4 drive volume is faster. You would have to delete a 2 disk to expand it to 4 disk.

The inner tracks of a hard disk are much slower, so as a volume fills up, it gets slower.

 
Posted : 04/05/2020 11:16 pm
(@roscoe)
Posts: 23
Member
Topic starter
 

Ah, so volumes are created from the outside in. I assume files are written that way as well?

Any tricks to reduce this impact? Would larger files be harder hit than smaller files? I assume 4K movies (higher streaming rate required) should be in the first volume?

Thanks...looking forward to actually seeing this work.

ps: Does SoftRAID have to be running or will it do its thing in the background (i.e. I can actually close the program once the volumes are created/mounted)?

 
Posted : 04/05/2020 11:27 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8005
Member Admin
 

You do not need to run SoftRAID unless creating a volume or managing a volume.

Remember to keep plenty of backups. Since you are planning on RAID 0, just remember your chances of losing data to a disk failure are 2 times or 4 times that of a single disk.

Its generally easier to manage a single volume, than lots of volumes but if you use more than one, put "storage" type files on the last volume.

 
Posted : 05/05/2020 8:27 am
Share:
close
open