1

A customer is looking to create a RAID 5 array on Windows 10 Pro, but Windows RAID 5 only allows him to only create 63 TB volume instead of his 112 TB (he has 8x16 TB HD).

Is there any way to create a 112 GB RAID 5 volume on Windows using a software RAID (including paying software)

2
  • 5
    Regardless of the hardware or software involved, a RAID 5 array with 8x16 TB disks is a terrible idea, should it ever need a rebuild (and it will, sooner or later).
    – Massimo
    Apr 13, 2021 at 13:23
  • Yes I Know, but same question applies with RAID 6. How to get big volume with software RAID under windows Apr 13, 2021 at 13:25

1 Answer 1

3

Short answer: No, it is not possible to create software RAIDs with this size in Windows (even with 3rd party tools).

Long answer: A lot of NTFS/ReFS features (some of them living in the kernel) support a maximum of 64Tb. Most people don't want to live without VSS, DynamicDisk management, DriveIndex, FastClode oder VHDX-Mount. You can, however, mount multiple massive volumes as folders, so that your ressource "looks" bigger (in one central folder hirarchy).

Opinion: This is a very terrible Idea. No DA storage system (running Windows) would be fast enough to do the amount of RAID parity calculation and I/O write on disks with this size on time - considering a "useful" throughput and/or useful storage latency. Do not do this, even on other OS.

If you need volumes with this size, consider investing in a SAN oder other specialized solutions for that problem (like object storage). Or even better, fix the architecture that led to this requirenment (I don't want to be rude, these are technical limitations and a lot of problems that I would recomment to consider).

2
  • Thanks. To me that's puzzling, cause low-end Synology NAS can easily do RAID 5/6 with ease. So resource-wise it shouldn't be that much. They seem to use software RAID (but they're on Linux). So I'm very astonished that a PC, with often considerable better hardware can't do it. Apr 13, 2021 at 20:52
  • A low-end NAS does not have NTFS or ReFS features (like Deduplication, ACLs, application consistent snapshots, remote management ...) and is bound to the same ressource constraints. MDM recommends a maximum of 12 disks (and is physically limited to 24) with a init-size of <60Tbyte. Just because it possible, is not always wise to do something.
    – bjoster
    Apr 14, 2021 at 12:43

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .