New user looking for some advice using Windows 11, multiple computers, and external enclosure

[Bunford]

I am an audio, music, and video creator/producer and am contemplating Drivepool as a solution for my storage needs, but looking for some advice.

I have 3 computers, being a desktop (main machine used daily), a creating/producing laptop (only used when needing to work remotely), and a daily driver kind of laptop that I use for general stuff (though this one is not actually used that often in reality). They are all running Windows 11 Pro. The internal drives I have in these machines are:

1. DESKTOP - 1 x 2TB NVMe (OS drive), 2 x 4TB NVMe (data drives), and 2 x 4TB SSDs (data drives)
2. LAPTOP 1 - 1 x 2TB NVMe (OS drive) and 1 x 4TB SSD (data drive)
3. LAPTOP 2 - 1 x 2TB NVMe (OS and data drive)

I also have an external USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps enclosure, which is what I am hoping to use Drivepool for. It is the TerraMaster D6-320. This is populated with 4 x 18TB Seagate IronWolf Pro 3.5" hard drives. The drives are the ST8000NT001 model that are CMR, 7200rpm, 256MB cache, and optimised for NAS and RAID-like storage solutions.

I am basically looking for a way to use the enclosure and the drives in a way that will:

1. Maximise the space I have
2. Back up my desktop to it
3. Improve drive performance, to hopefully better utilise the 10Gbps connection and improve read/write speeds as much as possible (e.g. similar benefits to a RAID0-like setup)
4. Have a local backup/duplicates on the drives of all the content to protect against drive failures (e.g. similar benefits to a RAID1 / RAID10-like setup)

As this is a DAS, it is also captured by my Backblaze account and will all be backed up to the cloud for an off-site, cloud-based backup as a last resort if ever needed.

So, in short, I'm wondering if Drivepool (and other tools by StableBit) can help me achieve the above before I invest time and effort into trialling the software prior to purchase.

 

The specs for the machines, if of any relevance, are:

• DESKTOP: Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master motherboard, AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU, 128GB DDR4 RAM, GTX 1070 GPU
• LAPTOP 1: Asus GL503GE, Intel i7 8750H CPU, 32GB DDR4 RAM, GTX 1050 Ti GPU
• LAPTOP 2: Dell Latitude 7390, Intel i7 8650U CPU, 16GB DDR4 RAM

[Shane]

"1. Maximise the space I have"

DrivePool can take any bunch of NTFS-formatted (or REFS if you use that) simple disks and pool their free space as a virtual drive; existing content is unaffected and you can continue using the disks individually if you want. Only caveat is that any one incoming file can't be larger than the largest amount of free space individually available on those disks.

"2. Back up my desktop to it"

I do nightly backups of my desktop and two laptops to my pool via a network share. Keep in mind the above caveat.

"3. Improve drive performance, to hopefully better utilise the 10Gbps connection and improve read/write speeds as much as possible (e.g. similar benefits to a RAID0-like setup)"

Short answer: If you want RAID0-like performance, you need an actual RAID0-like array. Nothing else comes close.

Longer answer: DrivePool's real-time duplication is simultaneous to the disks involved, so pools are no slower or faster to write to regardless of duplication level; in that respect it is comparable to RAID1. DrivePool will also attempt, where files exist on multiple disks within a pool, to read from the disk it decides is likely to offer better performance. It also offers a read-striping option, but the performance boost is minor due to DrivePool operating at the file level rather than the block level (and its read-striping is not compatible with some hashing utilities)

Additional: if you add one or more SSDs to a pool, you can set DrivePool to use those as an incoming cache (with scheduled emptying to the rest of the pool) or for specific folders (e.g. if you want certain files to always be saved to and kept on the SSDs).

Additional #2: if a drive in a pool fails, the pool becomes read-only until the failure is resolved. This is much better than RAID0 (where the array just flat dies) but not as good as RAID1 or higher (where the array usually continues to be writable).

"4. Have a local backup/duplicates on the drives of all the content to protect against drive failures (e.g. similar benefits to a RAID1 / RAID10-like setup)"

DrivePool can be set to duplicate files across any number of disks in a pool, and this can be controlled down to the folder level (e.g. you might have a folder tree at x2 but certain folders within that tree at x1 and x3, or vice versa, etc).

"As this is a DAS, it is also captured by my Backblaze account and will all be backed up to the cloud for an off-site, cloud-based backup as a last resort if ever needed."

There is an issue with file IDs, which some backup utilities use to decide what needs to be backed up, not having guaranteed persistence in DrivePool's pools. If Backblaze uses these without checking their validity, there are workarounds (e.g. backing up the physical disks that form the pool, rather than the pool itself) but it is something to keep in mind (e.g. it may constrain how you set up duplication).

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Just a note, Microsoft removed all support for ReFS on removable drives.   Also, I would recommend against using ReFS except for with a properly configured Storage Spaces array (as recovery only works in that setup).