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Trial allows 1 drive only

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(@darkroomdevil)
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Coming from Windows Storage Spaces in mirror setup.  Downloaded and installed the trial which is supposed to be full functioning.  Selected all 6 (6TB) drives in my OWC 6 enclosure - selected mirror.  Only shows 5.5ish TB available - would expect 16.5 ish and would expect RAID 1 to be able to span multiple drives.  I guess not but thought I should mention it here just in case I am missing something :)

 

Thanks!

 
Posted : 11/07/2021 10:08 pm
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(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8008
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Yes you are missing something simple. You already have volumes on the disks. (My prediction)

You do not mirror two volumes, you create a volume using free (not partitioned) space on the disks.

Run SoftRAID, initialize each disk. this will remove any prior volumes.

Now create a Mirror volume, you can have anywhere from 2 to 16 drives in a Mirror volume.

 
Posted : 11/07/2021 11:15 pm
(@darkroomdevil)
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Posted by: @softraid-support

you create a volume using free (not partitioned) space on the disks.

What I did was select Raid 1 in SoftRaid with 6 drives selected that were unformated.  That is where I got just 5.5 TB of space.

Do I instead create a volume across multiple disks in Disk Manager first?  Not within SoftRaid?  Instructions show everything happening in SoftRaid bot only with one disc ...

Posted by: @softraid-support

Run SoftRAID, initialize each disk. this will remove any prior volumes.

It looks like the Softraid command for that is Clean ...  There is an initialize command in Disk Manager ...

I just ran a test, I no longer have the 6 - 6TB drives to test as they are now in use but I do have some random old drives.  I found 4 drives, the smallest is 74.5 GB.  I did the following steps ...

  • Initialized all four in Windows Disk Manager
  • In SoftRaid Cleaned all four drives,
  • Selected New Raid Volume,
  • Raid 1 (mirror),
  • Selected all four drives and clicked next,
  • Maximum size shows 74.5 GB, the size of the smallest drive.

If we were creating a mirrored Raid I would expect the maximum size drive to be 74.5 times 2 ...  after creating Explorer now shows the size at 73.9

7 days left in the trial, I would really like the confidence of seeing this working :) and I really appreciate your help!

Thanks!

 

 
Posted : 12/07/2021 12:50 am
(@owc-james)
Posts: 6
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@darkroomdevil

Coming from Storage Spaces, I can completely understand the confusion here. A RAID mirror in SoftRAID works differently than what you've experienced with storage spaces.

A SoftRAID 1 array, or mirror, is only going to be as large as it's primary drive. What you are seeing is correct - 5.5 TiB (which is how Windows measures these) is equivalent to 6 TB, and the data on your primary drive is mirrored onto every single member of the RAID array. So instead of having storage that spans the whole enclosure, you've got identical data mirrored on each of the 6 drives.

If you would like to use SoftRAID to create a volume out of the entire drive set, you will want to use the RAID 0 or Stripe array type. Do keep in mind that this array type does not have any parity protection, so if a drive fails, then all data on the whole array is lost. 

 
Posted : 12/07/2021 8:26 am
(@darkroomdevil)
Posts: 3
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@owc-james

Thank you - I do want a volume that spans multiple drives.  I also want that volume mirrored for backup in case a drive fails.  It sounds like there isn't a way to set up Softraid to do that - is that planned for the future?

Thanks again

 
Posted : 12/07/2021 5:11 pm
(@softraid-support)
Posts: 8008
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@darkroomdevil

this could be terminology or it could be something we do not support.

We do support RAID 1+0, where you have 4 drives in a volume (up to 16), that are striped, then mirrored. All partitions must be the same size.
What do we not support is mismatched sizes, such as striping 2 4TB drives, then mirroring that to an 8TB volume. SoftRAID supports standard RAID, not the non standard hybrids.

To create a 4 drive RAID 10, go to new volume, and select 4 drives, or any even number, and select RAID 1+0 and create. That is all you need to do.

the trial is indeed 100% the same as the licensed product.

 
Posted : 12/07/2021 9:40 pm
(@owc-james)
Posts: 6
Member Admin
 

@darkroomdevil

no problem!

From what you're describing, it sounds like you want something along the lines of a RAID 1+0 - and you're right, currently in the Windows version, its not something we have supported. It should be a feature in a forthcoming update, but I'm afraid I don't have a date I can throw out with any confidence.

What you could do in the mean time is facilitate this manually - by simply splitting those drives in two and creating two separate 3-drive RAID 0 volumes on the drives inside that unit, then duplicate the data on each. You could either do it manually after every update to the 'primary' drive array, or you can use a timed backup software utility as well.

 
Posted : 13/07/2021 8:03 am
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