Storage Space or plain RAID 1

Well the title says it all. Which one is better in Win 10 ?

Had been using software RAID1 in Win 10 when one of the hard disks gave up. Now since I have to start from scratch, I can choose whichever is better.

 

I have gone through both the articles but there is no clear winner. I am more interested in real world pros & cons.

 

Why do you think you need to run RAID1 in the first place? RAID1 is NOT a backup plan. If your OS becomes corrupted, it gets corrupted on both drives. If you get hit by malware, both drives get hit. If a flood, fire, extreme power anomaly or a thief take out your computer, both drives are gone.

RAID1 is for systems - typically servers - that MUST be running and accessible 24/7 with no downtime. With a decent amount of RAM, mirrored drives provide no noticeable performance advantage.

I agree with Arie (even if not using SSDs). If you have two drives, use one as a real backup.

 

I need it for a critical 24x7 computer. The data is backed up hourly on a USB external drive.

 

Then I wonder why the question? If this is a mission critical system and data access is required 24/7, then RAID1 is the way to go (unless you have more drives) you can toss in. But again, that is only to achieve a more robust drive array. The mirrored drive should not be considered as a backup.

You say "from scratch". In that case, I would suggest using a dedicated RAID controller card (instead of the motherboard's integrated controller). This will cost more, but will be more robust too.

 

Storage spaces allows you to thin provision the space & then add hard disks as and when required. It also has disk mirroring.

A dedicated RAID controller somewhat speeds up the things, but if it goes kaput it's not very easy to get the same card 3-4 years down the line. The RAID may or may not be readable on other cards/motherboards.

 

Was contemplating that but just wanted to know if it's the correct way to go.

 

True note you then made the same argument for not using an integrated controller in your next sentence when you said,

That is, if you have to (or just want to) replace your motherboard 3-4 years down the line, you could be in the same boat.

I've been much more successful moving add-on controllers with the RAID arrays to new computers than I have moving RAID arrays to new integrated controllers on new motherboards. Admittedly, it has been several years since I attempted either. It may be easier today.

 

I never had any problem while moving Windows/Linux RAID from one motherboard to another since I use Windows/Linux to create and access RAID. Even stand alone utilities can read these RAID but it may not be possible with hardware based RAID.