Using the built-in software raid feature of Windows 10. I currently have 2 drives Raided together as Raid 0 in Windows 10, but wondering how many drives can Windows software-raid together as Raid 0?
Can it raid together 3 or 4 drives, and can it do an odd number like 3 drives in Raid 0, or does it have to be an even number of drives?
It appears any number of drives can be used with RAID 0, this according to
RAID - Wikipedia
RAID 0 consists of striping, but no mirroring or parity. Compared to a spanned volume, the capacity of a RAID 0 volume is the same; it is the sum of the capacities of the drives in the set. But because striping distributes the contents of each file among all drives in the set, the failure of any drive causes the entire RAID 0 volume and all files to be lost. In comparison, a spanned volume preserves the files on the unfailing drives. The benefit of RAID 0 is that the throughput of read and write operations to any file is multiplied by the number of drives because, unlike spanned volumes, reads and writes are done concurrently.[11] The cost is increased vulnerability to drive failures—since any drive in a RAID 0 setup failing causes the entire volume to be lost, the average failure rate of the volume rises with the number of attached drives.
RAID 1 consists of data mirroring, without parity or striping. Data is written identically to two or more drives, thereby producing a "mirrored set" of drives. Thus, any read request can be serviced by any drive in the set. If a request is broadcast to every drive in the set, it can be serviced by the drive that accesses the data first (depending on its seek time and rotational latency), improving performance. Sustained read throughput, if the controller or software is optimized for it, approaches the sum of throughputs of every drive in the set, just as for RAID 0. Actual read throughput of most RAID 1 implementations is slower than the fastest drive. Write throughput is always slower because every drive must be updated, and the slowest drive limits the write performance. The array continues to operate as long as at least one drive is functioning.[11]
@Staragox
RAID 0 requires any nr of Disks > 1 of mixed sizes. However depending on the file system used the aggregate total space must not exceed the limitations of the OS or file system (plus of course your hardware in running / managing that aggregate of Disks). !!!
Windows itself doesn't have genuine software RAID -- storage spaces are the nearest thing but a limitation on those is that other computers / non Windows NAS systems won't be able to read / write those. RAID 0 in Windows is best done via a hardware card or external RAID multi-bay disc storage. For Home users typically a 2 or 4 bay external disc storage device is the simplest option .
in RAID 0 this can present itself either as "JBOD" - Just a Bunch of discs which is the total storage aggregate of the devices -- this then works as 1 big disc and is read / written to sequentially - but you can also use RAID 0 with striping so that gives much faster throughput as the I/O is spread evenly across the drives. These boxes are connected usually to a computer via USB3/3.1 cable or ESATA expansion card -- don't use the mobo for these devices for ESATA connections. In either of these configurations any I/O error on any of the discs in the array and you then lose the lot --however modern HDD's are quite robust and reliable and in any case even on things like NAS servers you should backup / archive important data so you can recover it in case of loss.
The discs are then used as "normal HDD's" which can be shared etc. My advice is to avoid Windows storage spaces like the plague especially if file sharing with Non Windows devices such as NAS systems.
Cheers
jimbo
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