Windows 10 Parity vs RAID 5

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Jebidia

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I see a RAID 5 option in the disk manager in my Windows 10 pro 64bit os but it's greyed out , but I also see if could do a Parity RAID in storage space which it will allow me to do. So I'm curious why RAID 5 is greyed out and is there an advantage to getting RAID 5 to work vs Parity, which I know has horrific write speeds...I don't need a lecture on why I'm choosing RAID 5, just looking for someone with insight to my question.
Thanks!
 
Solution
I'm not sure if Windows 10 will run on a software RAID 5, that maybe why it's greyed out. You also need to convert the disks to dynamic.

Thinking about it a little more... You probably can do the software raid 5, but you may need to boot into a Windows Install or recovery media to convert them to dynamic.



*Some more Google-Foo* Windows can't boot from a dynamic disk, so in short Windows OS can't be on a software RAID 5.
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Storage Spaces are somewhat similar to LVMs in Linux. They let you lump together different sized physical disks in to storage pools. You can achieve a lot of the same redundancy as you would with a traditional RAID, but with more flexibility. Parity in SS is the same as a traditional RAID 5 in the sense of drive failure resiliency (can loose 1 disk), dual parity (can lose 2 disks). I've never used storage spaces so I cant really tell you the minimum physical drive requirements, but since it is virtual it may technically work with 1 disk. RAID 5 on the other hand must have 3 disks of the same size or larger, but if memory serves me it will ignore the extra space.
 
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Thanks Neemobeer. So there's no advantage of using the greyed out RAID 5 from the Disk Manager vs the Parity RAID in Storage Spaces? Do you have any idea why it's greyed out? I guess what I was reaching for was a software RAID in Windows that had performance like SoftRAID on a Mac, which is simple to use and has about 5x better write speeds than Windows Parity. Might not exist for Windows I suppose...
 
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Yes. I had them as 1 partition and Unallocated I believe, prior to creating the Storage Spaces Parity, but I could wipe them and do something different if there's a better way...
 
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I'm not sure if Windows 10 will run on a software RAID 5, that maybe why it's greyed out. You also need to convert the disks to dynamic.

Thinking about it a little more... You probably can do the software raid 5, but you may need to boot into a Windows Install or recovery media to convert them to dynamic.



*Some more Google-Foo* Windows can't boot from a dynamic disk, so in short Windows OS can't be on a software RAID 5.
 
Last edited:
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Solution


Yeah, I'm not trying to make it a boot drive or a system drive. I'll try formatting them and converting them to dynamic to see if that works...

thanks!
 
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Deleted the volume via Disk Manager and had 1 big volume at that point that was unallocated, RAID 5 greyed out. Converted the 3 drive single volume to Dynamic, RAID 5 greyed out. Removed the drives from the pool and tried them individually as basic and dynamic and it's greyed out on all options. I'm getting the feeling this is something that would use the boards chipset, even though I find absolutely no proof of that anywhere, I'm kind of out of ideas. I can't mess with my bios too much at this point as this system is a Hackintosh/Windows box with an Areca 1883 card that I use in professional business...If you have any other suggestions, besides bios, I'm all ears as I've got the drives wiped and unallocated at this point...Otherwise I guess I'll stick with the cruddy write speeds of the Windows Parity for awhile...Thanks for taking the time
 
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They are on Basic now, but i've tried both Dynamic and Basic. Again, I'm leaning towards a bios issue for some reason...I don't have the RAID option activated in my bios because I was looking for a software solution, similar to SoftRAID from the mac, because of the write performance in Windows Storage Spaces Parity.
 
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Yeah, you wouldn't think. But why would the RAID 5 option be greyed out in Windows, but it allows me to create a Parity RAID in Storage spaces?
 
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I'm not sure. It may be that they are trying to push people to use storage spaces which are essentially the same thing.
 
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Yeah, seems silly they would put it on there greyed out...But if you think performance going that route would be about the same then I'll just use Storage Spaces and deal with the RAID off the mobo down the road, once I fully switch this box to Windows.

And everything I google for RAID 5 Windows 10 points to Storage Spaces
 
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I did find this on my mobo website - x99-ud4:

Intel SATA Preinstall driver
(For AHCI / RAID Mode)
Note: Windows setup to read from USB thumb drive.
 
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I've got an Areca 1883 with 8 x 2tb in a RAID 5 that does well...Just had these drives around so I thought I'd throw them in. Too bad there's no windows software that has the performance of SoftRAID on mac...
 
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