RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. It is used to enhance the performance, data availability, and capacity of the storage devices.RAID technology is used either as Software RAID or Hardware RAID.
In Hardware RAID, drives are connected to the motherboard through special hardware called RAID controller whereas in software RAID the drives are connected directly to the motherboard whose configuration is managed by the utility software in the host computer’s operating system. The type of RAID that best suits your application depends on where you want to configure the drives.
Hardware RAID is an attractive option for applications that require complex RAID configuration whereas Software RAID is more affordable and is mostly suited for the workstation with limited data storage requirements. Software RAID best suits the entry-level servers which don’t require boot protection.
Read: Software RAID vs Hardware RAID – Differences explained.
Best free RAID software for Windows 11/10
In order to create and manage RAID infrastructure, you will be needing special RAID software. The RAID software allows for dynamic disk management and manages RAID partition. In this article, we two free RAID software picks that manages every aspect of data partition and distribution of contents in the storage devices.
1] Storage Spaces
Storage Space is a built-in technology in Windows OS which allows you to protect data in RAID hard disk from disk failures. The built-in software allows you to add as many disks as you want and ensures data protection from disk failures.
Storage Space groups two or more drives in a single storage pool and create a virtual drive called storage spaces. In simple terms, this built-in Windows feature is used to virtualize and provide space for storage. The virtual drives store copies of data from the actual drives so that if any of your drives fails, you still have a backup copy of actual data in the virtual drive.
Additionally Storage Spaces allows you to extend capacity by adding more drives to the storage pool. One major advantage of using this built-in technology is that it doesn’t require any installation yet manages disk and offers better data recovery.
Storage Spaces has limited features and hence it is an attractive option to use on a Windows PC, a stand-alone server with all storage in a single server, and on a clustered server with one or more shared SAS storage enclosures holding all drives.
2] SnapRAID
SnapRAID is a RAID software that allows you to make a backup of your disk arrays. It is a backup program that stores all the data information and recovers them in case of disk failures.
The software stores parity information, to avoid data corruption and keep the data integrity intact. In the case of disk failures, Snap RAID ensures data recovery from up to six disk failures. If there are too many disk failures, you might lose some data on the failed disks however it ensures that all the data in other disks are kept safe.
One of the key features of this software is that it allows you to recover the deleted files on the disk. With SnapRAID you can use storage disks of varied sizes and also scale up whenever you want.
One of the major advantages of using SnapRAID for disk arrays is that it doesn’t lock in user’s data. You can quit SnapRAID any time without reformating or shifting the data. This software uses very fewer system resources and power to access files hence makes less noise.
This software is most suitable for a home file server that does not have small files that keep changing frequently.
Let us know about your RAID software in the comments section below.
