Windows 10: Backing up Windows 10 pro with storage space array 4 drives

I have Windows 10 pro computer with a 4 drive storage space array. I need backup software to back up the storage space. I would like to have both bare metal recovery capability and file and folder backup capability.

Would the internal windows image program (Backup and Restore Windows 7) be able to back up the storage space for bare metal recovery? Are you aware of any commercial, preferably free, software that would provide the functionality per the first paragraph?

:)

 

Storage Space drives not usable by new Windows 10 Pro installation

Struggling to find a solution beside formatting the drives and rebuilding the array. I've installed an SSD in my Plex server. The old Windows 10 setup included a Storage Spaces array. Thew new Win10 setup doesn't acknowledge the array or the drives. UEFI
sees the drives, but they do not appear in either Disk Management or Storage Spaces.

Has anyone found a way to make the drives appear as an array without complete rebuilds?

Thanks

 

Can I use a RAID 1 drive array as my Windows boot drive?

I am not going to use hardware RAID. I want to use Windows Storage Spaces to create the RAID 1 array from two identical hard drives.

Do I install Windows on the first hard drive then create the RAID array using Storage Spaces?

When I create the RAID array will Windows automatically mirror the Windows installation including the boot partition to the second drive so the RAID array is bootable?

Are their any steps unique to this setup that I must follow when installing Windows or creating the RAID array so that the RAID array will be bootable?

 

Help with Storage Spaces

I am building a large storage array for a friend's sizable media collection. The target is >25 TB usable, and there are currently 6 6TB WD Red drives for the array with an SSD as the boot drive. I want a RAID5 (called "Parity" in the Windows Storage Spaces
options). The Windows 10 setup wizard makes this process very easy and it seems to work quite well. However, we noticed that two drives rather than 1 were missing from the usable capacity of the array (22.5 TB usable out of 33 TB total versus 28 TB out of
33). Two disks, rather than one, were being used as parity drives. This is referred to as RAID6. We tested it out and found that with 3 or 4 disk arrays, the Storage Spaces system defaults to a RAID5 array (i.e. one drive is subtracted from the usable capacity
for parity). I cannot find a way to select which RAID level Storage Spaces utilizes when creating the RAID array.

My question is this: how can I force Storage Spaces to create a RAID5 array versus a RAID6? If there isn't a way to select the RAID level used, there should be. I think that would be fairly simple to explain in a tooltip ("More Space" versus "Better Data
Security"). Alternately, MS could change the number of disks at which the array defaults from RAID5 to RAID6. As it stands, using 5+ disks in a "Parity" (RAID5 or RAID6) array means that you only gain ~10% more space over a simple RAID1 at 5 disks and ~15%
at 6 disks.

I hope there is a simple solution, as he would prefer not to transfer 20 TB of files just to have to rebuild the array when he can get the extra disk back.