How can you still use your old 128 and 256 GB SSD drives?

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philb2

[H]ard|Gawd
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For all the usual reasons I have several of these drives in my parts bin. It would be nice if I could somehow combine them so that Windows sees a 1 TB drive, for example. What hardware and what software? Windows 10 Pro.
 
+1 for drive pool! I use it to combine 18 disks into one roughly 85TB drive after formatting. A couple nice things about drive pool is that the drives can all be different sizes if you wish. Another good thing is it stores the files normally. So if program fails or a disk dies or whatever then you can still access all the files on all the other drives just as you would if they were individual drives to begin with.
 
Mermalion said:
+1 for drive pool! I use it to combine 18 disks into one roughly 85TB drive after formatting. A couple nice things about drive pool is that the drives can all be different sizes if you wish. Another good thing is it stores the files normally. So if program fails or a disk dies or whatever then you can still access all the files on all the other drives just as you would if they were individual drives to begin with.
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What if one drive fails? Do you lose the files on that drive?

How does stablebit work if you have a subdirectory that is so big that two or more drives are needed to hold the entire subdirectory?

I really like that the drives in a pool can be different sizes. That is key for my situation. Is it OK to mix NMe, regular SSD and spinning rust drives in the pool?
 
philb2 said:
What if one drive fails? Do you lose the files on that drive?

How does stablebit work if you have a subdirectory that is so big that two or more drives are needed to hold the entire subdirectory?

I really like that the drives in a pool can be different sizes. That is key for my situation. Is it OK to mix NMe, regular SSD and spinning rust drives in the pool?
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If one drive fails then you will lose the data on that drive. However, drivepool supports duplication. You can set it to duplicate all the files in the pooled drives or duplicate individual folders... You can set it to duplicate 2,3,4, ect times. If you do that then the files will be placed on multiple drives but you'll only see the one copy. I use that to duplicate my pictures folder. It works pretty well. Also drivepool supports balancing. You can set it up to fill the drives one at a time or spread the load across all the drives evenly. It's also perfectly fine to mix hard drives and ssd or nvme drives. Personally I've done all of that. You can use the ssd or nvme drives as a high speed cache if you'd like too.
 
Mermalion said:
If one drive fails then you will lose the data on that drive. However, drivepool supports duplication. You can set it to duplicate all the files in the pooled drives or duplicate individual folders... You can set it to duplicate 2,3,4, ect times. If you do that then the files will be placed on multiple drives but you'll only see the one copy. I use that to duplicate my pictures folder. It works pretty well. Also drivepool supports balancing. You can set it up to fill the drives one at a time or spread the load across all the drives evenly. It's also perfectly fine to mix hard drives and ssd or nvme drives. Personally I've done all of that. You can use the ssd or nvme drives as a high speed cache if you'd like too.
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All that for like $30!!! Wow. Too bad drivepool isn't built into Windows at say the Pro level
 
philb2 said:
All that for like $30!!! Wow. Too bad drivepool isn't built into Windows at say the Pro level
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Yeah, I think it's a good deal personally. They have a 30-day trial too. If you're on the fence about using that program then maybe give it a free test run. Some people use drivepool with SnapRAID for even better data security. Personally I just use drivepool alone with duplication, cloud backup (backblaze), and off site backups for my data security. Also if you get Stablebit scanner and drivepool and run them together it offers better security. Scanner can do a surface scan on the drives as often as you'd like. If it finds an issue with a drive it can automatically have Drivepool pull all the data off the drive, remove it from the pool, and inform you via e-mail. I've had this happen to an old 2TB Seagate drive I had. It had about 7yrs of run time so it was due for replacement anyway.
 
I just stick them in friends and family machines to replace the still out there spinning rust drives.

Yes, some folks do not have 12TB anime collections...just a few photos and docs.
 
Windows Storage Spaces if you want to combine them into 1 pool

If you have spinning drives in the system. Use them as a cache drive with PrimoCache. 128GB or 256GB of write cache can make a spinner feel amazing.
 
I'm a big fan of drive bender but drive pool offers the same functionality. You can get pretty cheap pcie > sata adapters if you're really loading up a system.

Otherwise I just keep them around to throw into low budget builds for friends/family.
 
Use my old ocZv3 for video editing output and temp workspaces etc. Also has os backup boot.
 
Family/friends cheap upgrades, or external USB adapters. Not a bad option for a giant and fast external flash drive. Sometimes I use them on client machine upgrades if I just want to get rid of them and replace a HDD. Anything 256gb with low writes I hold onto for my pfsense box.

If I get a few spare 1tb SSDs I'm going to replace my storage spaces pool on the htpc/fileserver.
 
External usb drive and drive for data shuttling since they're not as sensitive as an HD to transport damage.
 
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