QNAP NAS - How to Speed up RAID Creation

Large RAID storage for archive data storage solutions RAID is not a new thing. Originally created as means of combining multiple smaller hard drives and combining them into 1 large storage volume (so your PC would only see one hard drive like your C:/ drive, instead of several smaller hard drives connected). RAID stands for either Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Now the reason for the two different versions of the letters in RAID is largely due to how storage has changed. As Hard drives have grown progressively larger in capacity such as the Seagate 8TB Archive drive from , the need for creating massive volumes has been outweighed by the more current trend of data storage arrays needing Redundancy. Redundancy? Striping? Checksums? Mirror? What does it all mean? Large Scale RAID Storage Solution It should be mentioned that RAID is not something exclusive to NAS. In fact it has long stood as the means for all Storage arrays to maintain Hard-Drive safety in most Direct Attached Storage (DAS) and the more high profile Storage Area Networks (SAN) devices. However it’s importance in NAS is because of the length of time most Network Attached Storage devices will be powered on for… often 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – for the most part un-monitored. Having a sufficient safety net in place to preserve your data in the event of one of your hard drives breaking down or failing is paramount. In almost all RAID scenarios, you will have an...