Up until Windows 8, software RAID in Windows was a mess. Windows 7 has arbitrary restrictions on the available RAID levels, and it was impossible to create a Level 5 RAID without Windows Server. Fortunately, it is easy to build a software RAID 5 in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. We just need a couple of disks, and we will have the extra security of RAID in no time.
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We can create both level 1 and level 5 RAID in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, depending on the number of hard drives we have at our disposal. We will need two drives for RAID 1 and three or more drives for RAID 5.
However, with software RAID 5 it's impossible to have the operating system on the RAID. We can only use it for storage.
How to create a software RAID 5 in Windows 10 and 8.1
To create a software RAID 5, we need at least three hard drives of the same capacity, apart from the OS drive. All three disks need to be unformatted.
We can build a RAID with drives of unequal size, but then the smaller disk will dictate the array's total capacity.
Making sure our drives are unformatted
A simple way to check if the drives are unformatted is through the Disk Management Console. We can open it by pressing the Windows key + R, and on the Run window type:
diskmgmt.msc
All three drives we will use for the RAID need to be Unallocated.
If any of the drives has a partition, we need to back up any data on it, then right-click and select "Delete Volume."
After that, we won't be needing the Disk Management console anymore; we can close it.
Managing Storage Spaces
We go to the Start Screen (Windows 8.1) or Start Menu (Windows 10) and start typing "storage spaces." The "Search" dialogue will automatically come up, and we select the relevant option.
On the Storage Spaces window, we select the only option, "Create a new pool and storage space."
The system will automatically detect the unformatted drives and select them.
If we want, we can change the name, drive letter, or file system for the storage space. To create a software RAID 5, on resiliency type we select "Parity."
On "Size," we see the size of the storage space. To calculate the array's capacity, we just need to take the smallest disk's capacity and multiply it by the number of drives minus one.
With three 1TB HDDs, it is 1*(3-1) = 2TB array.
If we had three 1TB drives and one 500GB drive for the array, the array's capacity would have been 500*(4-1)=1500GB.
After we click the Create storage space button, our software RAID 5 is ready.
On the "This PC" folder, we will see it as one disk.
How to move our personal folders on the software RAID
The primary reason to create a software RAID 5 is for the added data security. When any of the three disks fails, we will still have access to all the data; nothing will be lost.
So, it makes sense to have our personal folders on the RAID. Documents, Pictures, Music, even the Desktop will be much safer there than on the single Windows disk.
Moving those folders is easy. We just need to go to Local Disk C: -> Users -> (our username) - filod, in the example.
There, we Ctrl+click to select some of our personal folders or select them all with Ctrl+A. Then, we right-click on one of the selected folders and click on "Cut."
Caution! If the hidden folder AppData is visible on your system, do not select that folder. It's not a folder that we can move to the RAID.
After we cut our important folders, we right-click on the software RAID 5 and select "Paste."
Now, whatever we save on the Desktop and in our Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, etc. folders will be safe on the RAID.
What happens when a drive on the RAID fails
If When one of the drives fails, the rest of the drives give us full access to our data. If, however, a second drive fails before we replaced the first drive, all the files on the RAID will be irretrievably lost.
Strangely, in the case of a disk failure, both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 take their time to report that something is wrong.
A few minutes after we boot the PC, Windows 8.1 will show the Action Center flag, with a nonchalant "Check Storage Spaces for issues" message.
It wouldn't hurt if it had a bit more urgency.
Windows 10 does it slightly better, by adding an exclamation mark on the notification. It still takes a couple of minutes to show up after boot, though, and some Windows 10 users don't check the Action Center notifications often.
The best warning system is if we had moved the Desktop folder to the RAID. We will know that something is wrong right at boot time.
The array won't appear when Windows boots...
...but it will appear a few seconds later.
Our data is still safe and readily accessible with the rest of the disks working.
In case we get the notification or the message that desktop isn't accessible, we need to go immediately to "Manage Storage Spaces."
There, we will get the warning that a drive is gone, and we have reduced resiliency.
How to rebuild the software RAID 5
The first thing we must do when we have a drive failure is to completely backup all the data in the RAID, preferably on an external hard drive. Remember, if a second drive fails, all the array data is gone for good.
After the backup and after we have bought and installed a replacement drive, at the "Manage Storage Spaces" window we click on "Change settings"...
...and then "Add drives."
The system will recognize the new drive, provided it is unformatted.
After we have added the drive, we remove the one that crashed from the RAID.
That's it. Now the software RAID 5 is healthy again and can withstand a single disk failure.
Is software RAID 5 for you?
HDDs are pretty inexpensive nowadays, even for a couple of Terabytes of capacity. Getting two or three of them to create a RAID array wouldn't make a big dent in our budget.
Will you consider building a Software RAID 5 on Windows 8.1 or Windows 10? Or do you find it wasteful, and prefer an external hard drive or cloud backup? Let us know in the comments below.
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Great article!! :D
Glad you liked it, Michael.
If you run into any problems, let us know, and we 'll do our best to help.
Hi, with windows 10, if i format and reinstall os, can i see again RAID 5?
Or if OS corrupts data, when i reinstall windows 10, can i see again RAID 5?
Hi.
I have 1 question.
I've created very huge software RAID 5 disks (1. RAID 7 disks. 2. RAID 4 disks) on Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and I would like to reinstall it to Windows 10. I want to use it as standard PC.
Can I remove my server OS, install Windows 10 and rebuild both RAID without data loss?
OS is installed on standalne disk.
Hi Tomas,
Since the creation of the storage pool needs unformatted drives, I'm afraid Windows 10 won't recognize the Windows Server RAID.
This is, of course, a theoretical answer, I haven't tried such a scenario.
Ok, thank you for reply. I have not decided about it, but I'll install Win10 and try restore RAID. I'll stop when OS will need format disks.
If you decide to go through with it, let us know if it works or not. It would be interesting either way.
Hi, I tried it, but Windows 10 couldn't recognize my RAID5. He really need UNALOCATED disks and he is not able to do what I wanted. I don't know if there are some programs on the Internet, I can use for RAID (I won't look for them). So I'm going back to the Server but 2012 R2 this time. Hope it will work (If not, I will have to go back to the 2008 Server.).
Hi, I have one note. I forgot one thing. When I was in Disk Management I could see my disks as "Foreign" (I don't know if it is good translation. I am not using English system). When it is "foreign" you can "Initialize" disk. If you select it, the wizard will start and Windows recognize type of disks as RAID. But when it was done disk manager wrote disk is "Faulty/Defective" and Free space was 100%. So I am back in Windows Server and all my data are back.
Excellent article. One important bit is missing though. I only played around a little bit so far with storage spaces, but to me it seems that the full capacity of the pool is available to all created storage spaces, unless the user sets a limit at creation. (Or even more than what is physically available.)
Which means having 2x 1T + 1x 2T drives, one can set up 4T non-redundant, 1T triple mirror, and 2T RAID-5 storage simultaneously. Obviously, once you put 1T (that is 500G on every drive) data on the raid-5 you can't add more than 2.5T to the non-redundant, or 500G to the triple mirror without adding disks to the pool, but I think it is genius.
Thank you for your input. Storage Spaces indeed have some novel properties regarding the capacity and the allocation of the disks.
This is more of an introductory post, in a future guide we will cover the storage spaces and their capabilities in more detail.
Good article. I would like to set up a RAID5 volume to use for backups for my other drives at some point after I upgrade to Win10. My question is what happens if your OS drive goes bad and you need to reinstall/recover your OS? Will you be able to reattach your raid'ed drives to a new OS install, or are they lost? If the RAID volume is lost, I think that adds an unacceptable single point of failure to ever using software RAID on windows.
Very good question. I had this same question, and still not sure myself. However, I had a Windows 10 installed with a "Two-way mirror" setup (2 x 5TB) w/ 4TB+ data on there. I kept the setup as is on Windows 10, then did a fresh install of Windows 10. When in the fresh Windows 10, I was able to reattach the existing two-way mirror with ease, and all data were there. It was a simple click in Storage Spaces, if I remember it right. I'm not sure whether "Three-way mirror" or "Parity" works the same though.
Thanks for the reply - that's at least a pretty good indication that it if it can reattach to a mirror created via storage spaces, it should be possible to reattach a 'parity' volume as well. I'd need quite a bit more confirmation before I would trust it in my setup though.
I felt Windows Storage Spaces was not the best way to go, given horrific reviews on data recovery online, so I tried StableBit DrivePool. It's so much better and easier to use. Plus, I can simply unplug and plug the drive on a working PC to look at its content. No need to go through all the hassle of Storage Spaces. Give that a try--you won't look back. Others include FlexRaid, unRAID, etc.
A cursory look at that makes me wonder exactly what that is supposed to do for me. It looks like it creates a JBOD pool that I can then selectively mirror certain folders? I like the idea of being able to take one disk and mount it separately to get the files off of it but I'm not sure if that's really what I'm looking for. What happens when one drive goes bad and I need to replace it? I assume the files on that drive are lost?
I've tested DrivePool with my spare 3 x 5TB drives. I simply add two of the drives to the pool, enabled x2 duplication (you can do 3x, 4x, etc.), and then it handles the rest. (There is an option to enable protection against multiple disk failures too, but that requires more disk space.) Then I added files to the pool, shutdown, removed one drive, started it back up, and DrivePool tells me one drive is missing. I replaced the missing drive with the third drive, and DrivePool rebuilds itself. All files are there, all 200GB worth of files. I don't know all the technical details on how DrivePool does it, but it's pretty seamless. I'm still testing the free-trial program out as I am not fully set on it yet. Hope this helps!
Interesting. It would be interesting to know if can you have an odd number of drives in the pool if you choose x2 duplication, thereby still gaining the advantage of the 1/3 more disk space? It seems that if you had 3 drives in the pool (say drive a, b, and c) and you chose x2 duplication it must mirror some things on a and b, and then other things on b and c. Regardless you've peaked my interest so I'm going to have to give their software a try once I have my new drives. Coincidentally I had one of my back up drives fail just yesterday so this is pretty timely discussion.
Interesting thought. I was wondering the same thing myself. With my three 5TB drives, I have a pool of 13.6TB. I've set it to do x2 duplication, and put in about 8.06TB in there already. I imagine the formula still applies:
5TB*(3 drives-1) = 5*(3-1) = 10TB
I'm going to try to fill >10TB and see if it asks for more space.
If true that is super cool because you then get raid 5 like space utilization from any number of drives yet your files are getting simpler mirrored protection. If one drive fails then I assume it just has to re-mirror any files that lost their mirror instead of going through a lengthy and risky raid rebuild across all of the remaining drives during which you can do nothing but pray it finishes. And worst case you can always take any single drive, plug it in somewhere else and still get the files off of it. This sounds almost too good to be true.
Just an update, I've added more files to the 13.6TB pool for a total of 12.9TB, but DrivePool acts as if I have 13.6TB to fill even with 2x duplication. I am very confused on how DrivePool works. I've created a thread in their forums regarding this at http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/1804-2x-duplication-with-3-drives-maximum-capacity/.
Gee guys, great eavesdropping on your discussion. Fascinating
Looks like the mods haven't approved my last message here. But I've posted a thread in the DrivePool forums regarding the spaces used for various duplications. It appears that if I use 2x duplication, then the DrivePool will use 2x more space; 3x uses 3x more space, and so on. So from above, my 8.06TB actually included the duplicated data. In essence, I have only dropped 4.03TB into the pool, not 8.06TB. I was reading it wrong.
Here is how duplication works with 3 drives:
"2x Duplication means that the file resides on two disks. If you have three disks, "file 1" may be on disk 1 and 2, "file 2" may be on disk 2 and 3, and "file 3" may be on disk 1 and 3". This way, if a single disk fails, you should have a copy of the files on the other disks."
Excellent. Thanks much for this info - you did the exact testing I would have done once I have new drives in hand so you have saved me a nice chunk of time.
Is RAID 5 information stored on those drives on RAID 5 itself and if your OS fails the information lies on RAID 5. As long as you have windows 10 that can reqad RAID array again. Just thinking out loud. Thanks
Hi, I have software RAID 5 on Windows Server 2012, but few days ago I was looking for some data files and I can't found them - it is lost. Everyone can say someone deleted them, but it is not first time accident and nobody had access to this machine (network or physical).
So I am looking answer for simple question:
How can data disappear or can be deleted by system, virus etc............?
If I use 6 3TB disks in RAID 5 running Windows 10 how much space is used for parity and how much free storage is available of the total of 18TB? Thanks.
Always the equivalent space of one disk is "lost" for parity. So you would have 15 TB.
4TB drives are inexpensive now, so to have 8TB of safe storage is well worth the price.
My POS Qnap TS-451 just died only 3 months out of warranty, so I've decided to implement one of 2 choices: 1) go back to the on board RAID5 (Asus Sabertooth 990FX AMD RAID controller) that I was running before I stupidly switched to the Qnap, or 2) set up a 4 disk RAID with single parity in Windows 10 using Storage Spaces. I have no experience with storage spaces, but I'm wondering if there are any advantages over my on board solution. I will say that I used the AMD on board RAID for several years without a single issue.
This volume will primarily be used as Plex media server, but also to store my documents, photos, etc. Blistering write performance isn't as important as reads, since it's media server. By the way, I'll be using 4 - 8TB WD Red hard drives for a total usable capacity of 24TB (pre format).
Anyway, I know that all on board RAID controllers are not created equal, but I'm just looking for input from people who have used both on board RAID controllers and Windows 10 Storage Spaces (not Windows Server), to get first hand comparisons between these two solutions. Hopefully someone here may have experience with my particular motherboard's RAID.