Windows 10: How to setup RAID 5 with ReFS formatted Hard Drives?

​MB: Asus Z97-K ( 6x SATA 6Gb/s ports ) / CPU: G3258 / Windows 10 Pro installed on a SSD


Is this an Okay/proper way of installing 4x 4Tb WD Red drives in RAID 5 - formatted ReFS


1: in "Disk Management" set the 4 drives as simple /unformatted

2: downloaded to Desktop & double clicked - "Enable_formatting_with_ReFS.reg"
as per Brink's ReFS File System - Enable or Disable in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

3: in "This PC" right clicked each drive - and formatted as ReFS

4: rebooted into Bios - Advanced menu / PCH Storage Configuration / SATA Mode Selection - set [AHCI] to [RAID] & saved

At this point don't boot into windows 10 - it will want to do a repair

5: rebooted - during POST - pressed <Ctrl> + <I> to enter Intel Rapid Storage Technology ROM utility

6: created RAID 5 volume - exited

still don't boot into windows 10​

7: rebooted into Bios - Advanced menu / PCH Storage Configuration / SATA Mode Selection - set [RAID] to [AHCI] & saved

8: rebooted into windows 10 - thru "Search Windows" entered MSCONFIG / Boot Options / ticked SafeBoot

9: rebooted into Bios - Advanced menu / PCH Storage Configuration / SATA Mode Selection - set [AHCI] to [RAID] & saved

10: rebooted into windows 10 Safemode - in Elevated Command Prompt only entered MSCONFIG / Boot Options / UNticked SafeBoot

11: rebooted into windows 10 - everything system in works Okay

Disk 0 is Basic ( C: ) 209 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot, etc)
Disk 1 - Basic ( R: ) 11178 GB ReFS Healthy (Primary Partition)

SFC /SCANNOW - no integrity violations

:)

 

Windows 10 Raid 0

Before my Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Installation, I went into my Motherboard's BIOS and set my two 2TB hard drives in Raid 0 formation. After my Windows 10 Installation, "this computer" sees my "C" drive as only 2TB. Windows 10 should recognize my Raid 0 "C"
drive capacity as 4TB. Why is windows 10 listing my "C" drive as 2TB? Windows 10 should have spanned the Installation across my two hard drives in RAID 0 formation. Did Windows 10 install only onto one hard drive? How can I correct this Windows Installation
to span across my two Seagate SSHD hard drives in RAID 0 formation?

 

Storage Spaces - Is there a calculator ?

Hi JGT,

I'm not quite sure what you mean. I provided 2 types of resiliency that can be used on a 3 drive setup, but for clarity I will include the following table:

Storage Pool Size
Resiliency Type
Usable user space

1TB (using up to 5 drives)
Stripe (equivalent to RAID 0)
1TB**

1TB (using up to 5 drives)
Two-way mirror (equivalent to RAID 1+0 with bit rot protection*). Pool size / 2

500GB**

1TB (using up to 5 drives)
Parity (equivalent to RAID 5). Pool size / 1.5
666GB**

1TB (using 5+ drives)
Three-way mirror (equivalent to RAID 6 with bit rot protection*). Pool size / 3
333GB**

1TB (using 5+ drives)
Parity (equivalent to RAID 6 without bit rot protection). Pool size / 3
333GB**

*Note that in order to use the bit rot protection feature, the file system used by the Storage Space needs to be ReFS (Resilient File System).

**Note that the sizes don't include the overhead for file system meta data, etc. The actual usable space will be slightly lower.

 

1: Intel RST initialization completed after a bit over 48 hours

2: The SSD is a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB - Bios SATA mode is RAID
"Samsung Magician is not properly communicating with Samsung SSD ... If you are using any custom storage ... may not work ..."
So I uninstalled Samsung Magician & set Windows to optimize/trim weekly

3: System Restore doesn't work "encountered an error ... (0x81000203)"

I have a clone of the SSD, that I'm not sure will work now? So I'm thinking that back up the system to an external drive would be safer
The Raid 5 is empty - a test write of 4GB was super fast for about 1/3 of the write (took 1-2 seconds) then slowed down to about 70Mb/s to finish, read was about 225Mb/s
All data to go onto Raid 5 will be backed up to CD's, DVD's & external drives, etc
..........................

Edit: due to the word driver*Huh in this post being turned into and used as a link to a driver updater advertisement

 

update 2

All is great ...This PC is now being used as the Plex Server with various music and video libraries

... so far very happy