Windows 8.1 storage spaces calculator?

[Ollie Dixon]

I have a new 3TB drive on my desk. I'm trying to decide if i'm going to order 3 more. Or 2 5tb drives. Same price. Well the 3 3tb drives is about $30 more. Is there any way i can find out the usable space of both setups with the parity option?

4 x 3tb = ?
2 x 5tb + 3tb = ?

Thanks 😀

 

[i7Baby]

You lose about 100gb per TB

So 12TB will end up with about 10.8TB
and 13TB will end up with about 11.7TB

 

[hjj174]

You know how HDDs aren't quite accurate with their actual size? Well I have two 1TB drives, each 931GB, and in storage spaces it adds up to 1.8TB.

 

[Ollie Dixon]

I don't know why but something tells me i will end up losing more space with 2x5tb + 3tb then 4 x 3tb

EDIT: Best i can find is drobo...

http://i.imgur.com/KInSa7q.jpg

Cant use the calc with 5tb drives though 🙁. See what i mean? Because it would need to account for the size of the 2 5tb drives the parity info will be larger.

Does storage spaces work in the same way?

 

[i7Baby]

You lose about 10% of space due to formatting.

 

[Ollie Dixon]

You're missing my point.

 

[i7Baby]

You say that but don't say what the point is. If you can't communicate well then get some help.

 

[Ollie Dixon]

I don't know why but something tells me i will end up losing more space with 2x5tb + 3tb then 4 x 3tb

EDIT: Best i can find is drobo...

http://i.imgur.com/KInSa7q.jpg

Cant use the calc with 5tb drives though 🙁. See what i mean? Because it would need to account for the size of the 2 5tb drives the parity info will be larger.

Does storage spaces work in the same way?

Please read it again..

 

[i7Baby]

Parity info has no relationship to the resultant storage size. Where are you getting this from? Do you know what "parity" actually is?

 

[Ollie Dixon]

Wow..

Did you even look at the pic? Do you know what parity data is?

Parity has a huge amount to do with the resulting storage size.. if it didn't then id get the full amount of space on the the drives. Example 4 x 3tb would be approximately 10.91tb instead of 8.71tb.

Since i want resiliency.. the parity option.. that eats up a large chunk of data. Unless you know of some magic system where parity information takes up no space? ..

This is why i am here asking the question. Is there a calculator out there like other raid calculators but that can show me what happens in a windows 8.1 storage space pool.

http://www.fsl.cs.stonybrook.edu/docs/integrity-storagess05/figures/raid.png
Nothing to do with size huh? Those greyed out sections.. what are they then?

 

[hjj174]

Storage Spaces is just a software implementation of RAID, not a hardware version that you use through your motherboard. It just doesn't say the RAID level number when you are setting it up. Also, not every version of RAID has parity checking. In Storage Spaces, when setting it up, you have the option of adding error checking but you don't have to add it. You can just do simple spanning or striping.
Soure: Personal experience with storage spaces

 

[Ollie Dixon]

I am fully aware of everything you just said.. This is why i clearly stated i was going to use the parity option in my OP.

It's also why i'm here asking the question. It works similarly but differently then hardware RAID (Why i want to use it). So i asked if there was a calculator that takes into account how it works... Not sure why this is so confusing to everyone.

 

[hjj174]

I don't get why you need someone to find a calculator for you, especially when there probably isn't one. Why not just ask on answers.microsoft.com? You are more likely to find your answer there.

 

[Ollie Dixon]

Need somebody to find me one? I looked and could not find one. All i asked was, is there is one. All i got was 2 people talking about a bunch of shit i wasn't even asking about. Newb shit like a 2tb drive is actually 1.81.. lol. Telling me storage spaces isnt hardware RAID. Thanks tips. Telling me parity data has nothing to do with the overall size of the pool.. just.. wow.

I don't get why either of you even responded. You don't know? Say nothing, or suggest answers.microsoft.com in your fist post. You know for a fact one doesn't exist? Say so. You know of one? Post a link. Why bother talking about anything else?

 

[hjj174]

The title may say calculator but your posts were not at all indicative of asking about one. First, you were asking about resultant capacity of different arrays, then you made a vague mention of a calculator. For the record there is no need to be snarky. Anyways, this is about as close as you are going to get with a calculator and it only tells you percentages.

http://www.ecs.umass.edu/ece/koren/architecture/Raid/raidiator.html

Also, a formula that I belive would work is (Drive1+Drive2+Drive2+......)/number of disks=amount of data lost from parity. So (5TB+5TB+2TB)/3=4TB lost.
(3TB+3TB+3TB+3TB)/4=3TB lost. The equivalent of one drive, if all the drives were the same capacity but this still applies here, is lost when using RAID 5.

 

[ailsajohn]

RAID calculator help for storage

 

[jgt1942]

Quick follow up on an old thread. I just created a Parity Storage space using three drives (Win10 x64), 1-3TB, 1-4TB and 1-6TB. The pool has 11.8TB of capacity.
I'm now in the process of copying data from a 4TB and 6TB drive (connected to the MB) to the new space. The copy process has been running for about 12 hours and it is estimated that about 231 hours remain. Thus there appears to be a huge performance hit for my configuration. To free up the three drives it took about 24 hours to move the data to other drives on the system. BTW the drives in the storage pool are connected to my MB.