Hi,
We've just bought a Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Server (Dell NX3100) with 12 x 3TB drives (and hardware RAID). I'd like to create a RAID-10 array which will be shown in Windows as one volume. I have two options:
- Create the RAID-10 array using all 12 of the disks which is then seen in Windows Disk Management as one disk and I create one large volume on this.
- Create three separate RAID-10 arrays (each of four drives) which Windows sees as three separate disks and create a spanned volume covering all three disks. I still get the single one large
drive in Windows Explorer.
The reason I am thinking of going for the second option is RAID array rebuild times. If a drive fails in one of the four-drive arrays the rebuild time will be much faster than it would take to rebuild after a failed drive in the first option.
I can't see any reason why I shouldn't go for the second option but wanted to confirm that nobody could see any issues with this? Does creating a spanned volume in Windows 2008 over hardware RAID arrays create any complications?
Many thanks.