Im looking for a reason why a person would use a Spanned volume rather than a Striped volume?

If my understanding is correct

Striped: Faster read/write speed than spanned, but I "assume" more wear+tear
Spanned: No speed benefit like striped, but data is written sequentially and fills up Drive1 before filling up Drive2, so it saves on wear+tear

Beyond that Im not sure if there is any other deciding factor on which to use.

Definition found below:

A striped volume uses the free space on more than one physical hard disk to create a bigger volume. Unlike a spanned volume, a striped volume writes across all volumes in the stripe in small blocks, distributing the load across the disks in the volume. The portions of disk used to create the volume need to be the same size; the size of the smallest free space included in the striped volume will determine.

2 Answers

A spanned volume can be extended, but not a stripped.

A failure of eiher drive in a stripped volume will result in a total loss. You may be able get some data back from a spanned volume if the file is completly on one disk.

If you do not have a good backup system, then I suggest you don't use either option.

2

A Span is not a RAID type, a Stripe is (RAID0).

You can build Stripes from Spans, but not Spans from Stripes. :)

Say you had 3 drives - 1 x 500GB drive and 2 x 250GB drives.

You can create a spanned volume across the 2 x 250GB drives, giving you 1 x 500GB volume. You then use that in a Stripe with the 500GB drive so that you get the balance you need to take advantage of RAID0 (the Stripe).

Or use the Span + the 500GB drive to make a 500GB Mirror (RAID1).

I will say that this is general info about RAIDs, and I'm not sure Windows' inbuilt software RAID actually allows this, as I personally never use software RAIDs. :)