Raid software

[Youk]

Hi all,

I currently have several drives I keep my media on:

2x2TB seagate drives
1x500GB western digital
1x3TB western digital

These drives are all near full and I'm looking to set up a software raid.

What I want to do is merge these into one disk (as the OS sees it) and have data protection if a drive fails. I intend to replace the old drives with newer 3TB ones in the near future so I will need to be able to dynamically expand and swap the drives.

I did investigate this some time ago and found a paid piece of software that would allow me to merge all these drives into a single disk on windows and provide me with protection for a failed drive. I wanted to build a new PC before doing this... and after doing that I've lost the link to the software!

Can anyone help me out? Do you know any paid software that will allow me to do what I'm looking?

 

[RealBeast]

Windows disk management will let you do all of that, HERE is a very basic guide to start with to get the general idea.

 

[JeauxBleaux]

What model is your motherboard?

 

[JeauxBleaux]

Windows disk management will let you do all of that, HERE is a very basic guide to start with to get the general idea.

Your solution does not provide the "hot spare" capability ("have data protection if a drive fails") that OP is looking for.

 

[Youk]

As far as I remember it created a software RAID setup and used a parity drive (without having to wipe all my drives now).

I basically want my OS to view all my drives as a single disk were I can drag and drop files into it without having to worry about the drives being of different sizes. I also want to ability to dynamically grow the setup so I can swap out the smaller driver for larger ones in the future.

I'm absolutely kicking myself for not bookmarking it.

My motherboard is an ASUS Rampage IV Extreme x79.

 

[JeauxBleaux]

FreeNAS, OpenFiler, UnRAID, any of these ringing a bell? Of course, they are all external storage solutions for JBOD w/parity.

 

[JeauxBleaux]

Replacing Microsoft's DriveExtender for WHS is Drive Bender, DriveHarmony, and DrivePool. These all allow for data protection by way of dual copies (down to the folder level) of critical data.

 

[Youk]

Thanks JB! It was FlexRAID...

Do you have any experience with those or with FlexRAID?

 

[JeauxBleaux]

I've heard a lot of good stuff about FreeNAS but, sorry, no. I have an Areca hardware controller that has served me well for about 6 years now.