DriveHarmony™ Software by DataCore Software is a storage pooling add-in created for use with Windows Home Server 2011 operating system. DriveHarmony™ Software creates a transparent layer across assorted hardware disk devices which provides such benefits as increased performance, data protection and uninterrupted data access, and allows for future storage expansion.
All management of DriveHarmony™ Software is performed in the Windows Home Server 2011 Dashboard.
DriveHarmony can "pool" one or more physical disks of variable sizes and types to create a "hard drive" that is made to look and behave like a regular disk volume while providing additional benefits. When the hard drive is created, it is automatically initialized, formatted, and assigned a drive letter. The hard drive can then be "shared" or configured for backup using features in Windows Home Server 2011 operating system.
Physical disk requirements:
o Physical disks must be non-partitioned.
o Any type of internal disk supported by the Windows® operating system can be used, such as SSD, SATA, and IDE.
o Disks may be up to 3 TB in size.
o External USB drives can be used, but are not recommended for performance reasons. Thumb drives are not supported.
o Hard drives can be created in two types:
· Protected drives contain two copies of the data and provide uninterrupted access to data in case of hardware failure. If a disk should fail, the data can be used and accessed from the copy. This data protection method is known by a technical term called "mirroring" or RAID1. This type is recommended for important data files.
· UnProtected drives contain one copy of the data and therefore do not have the benefits that a protected drive does. If a disk should fail, the data on the drive is destroyed and cannot be accessed. This type is recommended for less important files that do not require protection.
o When protected drives are extended or unprotected hard drives contain more than one physical disk, data is spread across all disks. In this manner, the data can be accessed simultaneously from all disks at the same time which results in faster performance. This technique is known by a technical term called "data striping" or RAID0.
o Multiple hard drives can be created so that storage devices with similar speeds can be grouped. Drives with faster devices can be used for higher priority data.
o When the hard drive nears capacity, it can be extended to accommodate more data.
o A physical
disk can be replaced seamlessly
and without interruption to data access if it is part of a protected drive.
In the case of an unprotected drive,
in order to replace a physical disk, the entire unprotected drive
will have to be copied to a new drive. After all data has been copied
to the new drive, the original unprotected drive
can be deleted and the physical disk can be removed.