What:
Redundant Array of Independiente Disk (RAID), is mandatory in the storage industry. Whether you work with enterprise SAN or a home NAS, more often than not, you will be required to configure RAID.
But what about a home PC? The commons options are hardware or software RAID. The first one is dependant on the motherboard and the BIOS. The second one depends on your operating system.
RAID will optimize your PC storage for data protection and performance. Also, can extend the capacity of a pool, when using a stripe configuration. In a PC, RAID is usually considered to store an extensive library of video and photos, for example.
Let’s configure software RAID in our PC using Windows 10. The configuration of RAID is straightforward now, and in Windows, is called Storage Space
Storage Spaces helps protect your data from drive failures and extend storage over time as you add drives to your PC. You can use Storage Spaces to group two or more drives together in a storage pool and then use capacity from that pool to create virtual drives called storage spaces. These storage spaces typically store two copies of your data so if one of your drives fails, you still have an intact copy of your data. If you run low on capacity, just add more drives to the storage pool.
Requirements:
- You need a copy of Windows 10.
- You need at least two extra drives.
How:
On this example, I am going to configure two HDD of 2TB each in RAID 1. This configuration is Two-Way Mirror in Windows Storage Space.
- Install the drives in your PC. Do not format them.
- From the Windows search box, type Storage Space and select Manage Storage Space.
- Select Create a new pool and storage space.
- Select the available drives you want to use in your pool, only two in our example. Select Create Pool.
- Name the pool, choose a drive letter, and leave File System as default (NTFS). In Resiliency, select the desired option from the dropbox menu. Two-way mirror in our example. Leave Size as default and Select Create Storage Space.
- Once the configuration finishes, the pool will appear under Storage Pool. From here, you can monitor, modify, or delete this pool.
- The new drive (pool) is now available under Devices and Drives from Windows File Explorer.
Note that this method does not work for raid0, storage spaces does not support creating a raid0. So everyone who used "simple" thinking it was raid0, it was not. You created a JBOD which is something completely different.
To create a raid0 you need to use disk management.