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Windows Storage Spaces

Trever Ehrfurth edited this page Dec 2, 2019 · 2 revisions

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Initialize Drives
  3. Setup

1. Introduction

Storage Spaces is a technology in Windows that can help protect your data from drive failures. One of the best benefits is that you can easily add or remove drives to the pool and even take the whole pool to a different Windows computer and it will recognize it.

Resiliency

Storage Spaces supports four types of resiliency:

Simple: A simple storage space writes one copy of your data and does not protect you from driver failures. This option requires, at least, one drive, and each new additional drive adds another point of failure.

Two-way mirror: This option writes two copies of your data on the drives, which can protect your data from a single driver failure. Two-way mirror requires a least two drives.

Three-way mirror: This option works similar to the two-way mirror, but it writes three copies of your data on the drives, which will help you to protect your data from two simultaneous drive failures. Three-way mirror requires, at least, three drives.

Parity: Similar to the standard RAID 5 technology, Parity for a storage space writes your data with parity information on the available driver to help you protect your data from a single driver failure. This option requires a least three drivers.

2. Initialize Drives

  1. Format your storage hard drives to have a cluster size of 64KB

  2. This will allow your maximum pool capacity to be around 126TB. Which only half will be usable in a two-way mirror.

  3. You can do this from Disk Management.

3. Setup

  1. Go to Control Panel > System and Security > Storage Spaces.

  2. Click Create New Pool and Storage Space.

  3. Select the drives you want to add to the pool and click Create Pool.

    Warning: All data on the drives will be erased. Backup accordingly

  4. Enter a name, drive letter, and file system as you wish for the pool.

  5. Then choose the resiliency type, I recommend using Two-way mirror.

  6. Set the maximum pool capacity and click create.

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