This functionality is similar to TrueNAS and Unraid from the Linux world, but for Windows, and again it is a 100% software solution without needing to purchase any RAID Hardware. Great Video! Thank you, Ali! :)
I need to find a way for RUclips to display only videos that are less than 6 months old. This problem with outdated videos wastes time and never works because they change Windows so often that only recent videos have instructions you can follow.
Here is my situation: I currently have two mirrored drives (no storage pool) each three terabytes, and I want to get a third 3 tb drive and set up those with parity to get a total of 6 tb usable storage. But I don't have a place to copy all my data and then restore it to the parity Storage Space. So I'm thinking if I break the mirror, then create a pool from two of the drives and create a striped storage space to get about 2.5 tb to copy all my data (risky i know), then format the first drive holding my data and add it to the pool and then create a Parity Storage Space with the leftover space from the stripe, this should give me about 3 TB of usable space on this new parity drive, copy all my data from the stripe, then remove the stripe and increase the size of the parity drive. Will this work?
tired of playing with a pair of measly 1 TB drives in a Storage Spaces Mirror; I trust the process now, and have a pair of 12 TB WD Red Plus drives inbound, which should meet all my storage needs for at least 5-6 years , based on past usage patterns...
After evaluating the cost of a pair of mirrored 10 TB drives already on order, I went ahead and ordered a 3rd drive, to enable a 3-drive parity array but of of double the storage (now 20 TB) for only 50% more cost...; should last my family of five ....forever, I'd suspect! (THose darn i-phone pics and movies take up space!)
Thank you for comment and great question, As this is a software base RAID and is controlled by OS, deleting the operating system will delete the configuration. If we are in a situation where we might need to re-install the operating system, we have two options: 1. Take a backup before deleting windows and rebuild the Space after install, then restore backup 2. If supported by the Motherboard, create hardware RAID in the BIOS
@@AliZiyaei Incorrect. That's the beauty of being software defined storage, it can be hardware agnostic(depending). You can take the disks from your Storage Spaces pool to another machine(or the same machine with windows re-installed), import the storage spaces configuration and everything will be intact. The caveat being if you have an "upgraded pool," you can not take it to a version of Windows that hasn't been updated to allow "upgraded pools." Also ReFS is no longer supported in Windows Pro 10/11, they have made that exclusive to the Workstation versions of Windows(10/11) and of course server editions. That is unfortunate because ReFS is much more resilient/better/faster/stronger than NTFS. A Storage Spaces array built with NTFS is 50% less cool than a Storage Spaces array built with ReFS. Also, parity in Storage Spaces is a steaming pile of garbage, it is/was prohibitively slow. Recent updates have made it faster, but is still slow especially when compared to a mirror. This is well documented. IMO the only Storage Spaces config that is worth setting up(if you care about your data and the ability to use the data at any reasonable speed) is a mirror with ReFS(pay extra for the Workstation version of Windows 10/11). In that configuration Storage Spaces is fast and resilient. Disclaimer: Yes, there are scenarios where you don't need/care about speed(using parity) or resiliency(large, dense, NTFS array), in those situations of course, go ham.
@OShackHennessy - It's interesting and strange that you have problems after reinstall Windows.... In my case it was different. After a motherboard failure I had to build a new computer. I installed a new system from scratch and then put in the data disks and everything works as expected - the pool works (parity). The data was maintained. For me is ideal :)
Storage space is a software RAID and it works well as a RAID, weather it be RAID 0,1,5 etc. Just remember RAID is not a backup. I am running 5 SSDs in raid 5 now with Storage Space, but I also back it up. To ensure you don't loose data use the 3 2 1 strategy. 3 copies of your data on at least 2 different media types and 1 stored off site.
when i ran a pair of drives mirrored, got 100+ MB/sec writes; when I ran 3 drives in parity, the numbers plummeted to 32 MB/sec! Anyone else see this sort of abysmal parity write speeds?
Hi Ali. I have an issue with Storage Space and trying to get an answer with difficulty. I have 2 drives mirrored creating a storage pool on a Win 10 PC. I now want to remove these disks and put them into my new PC. However I do not see the option to Prepare For Removal for either disk and am unsure if can just disconnect and reconnect the disks into the new PC without any data loss. I know can backup to external drive and then delete the pool which i understand removes the data from both SATA disks but would prefer if possible to just unplug and recreate the pool in new Win 11 PC. Can you or subscribers advise regarding same please ? Thanks.
Hi Keith, Unfortunately, you can't do that, Storage Pool and Storage space in general is controlled by the operating System, the reason you do not see prepare for removal is that there are no empty disks available in your pool. removal process will transfer the data from disk to an empty one so you can move it out. the good thing in your scenario is that if both disks are in mirror mode, this means you have tow copies of your data, so you should be able to disconnect one disk without loosing any data and by connecting it to the next PC without formatting the drive you should be able to see all your information. (simply import the disk on the new computer disk management console)
@@AliZiyaei Ok thanks Ali. If I do that and all is well can I then delete the pool on original machine even with the other drive missing to return that drive to usability again ?
Yes, you can, Once you delete the pool, you can import the disk in disk management snd you should see the content. I highly recommend a full backup before doing any of the above as we don't know what might go wrong when touching physical disks. Better safe than sorry
You use VMware and virtual drives. I tried to create a storage pool with only SSD's and get an error when trying to create it. It can't create pools with only SSD's. It works with mechanical drives, but not with SSD's It works if you have mechanical drives and add the SSD as a cache drive.
Thanks for your comment Sten, Actually I don't have any mechanical disks only SSD. How many disks do you have connected? I have done it on physical computers as well with SSD disks same process and same result. You just need to make sure they are empty and uninitialized
Have you tried with PowerShell? You can use this article to learn how to do it with PowerShell, If I find some time I will create a video for that as well, But it won't be any time soon, im sorry, it is a very busy time for me learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/storage/new-storagepool?view=windowsserver2019-ps
I have used up to 4 SSD’s to create various pools without issue so I know it works. Obviously that doesn’t help you solve your problem but I’m only confirming it can work.
@@OShackHennessy The GUI for Storage Spaces kind of suck. Many people can verify that. I managed to fix it with Power Shell and commands instead. You also get a lot more options with commands.
Striping on mirror makes no sense - a mirror is an exact copy. It give the performance boost as the system can choose any of the three drives to get the data. In the case of a failure you have 1 (or 2) copies of the data. I guess I don't understand the comment that the data is striped in the mirrors - unless of course Microsoft doesn't use standard definition of mirror - which knowing Microsoft wouldn't be totally suprising.
Ok, Now I know where is the confusion, Mirror in Storage space can be a confusing phrase, but its actually Two way mirror and three way mirror. In two way mirror data stripes (aka data) is written on two disks, to your point identical, when we say data stripes, we mean data pieces. and in three way mirror data is copied on two more disks (3 in total) and system can tolerate 2 disk failure. I hope this helps.
@@AliZiyaei Ok- I work on a much larger platform. Arguably thy only have 2 way mirroring as the vendor prefers various levels of striping the data - or parity bit over mirroring. But they don't refer to the mirroring as stripes. Stripes in my world is always used in reference to checksums where the parity bit (or bits depending on level) are striped across disks. Obviously this would be incorrect usage of the term in mirroring, rather referring to the tracks being duplicated across either 2, or 3 disks depending on whether its 2 way or 3 way mirroring.
Do you have enough empty space on other disks to move the contents of this disk? Or have you created a pool that requires certain number of disk as minimum
This functionality is similar to TrueNAS and Unraid from the Linux world, but for Windows, and again it is a 100% software solution without needing to purchase any RAID Hardware.
Great Video! Thank you, Ali! :)
You are most welcome 🙏
I need to find a way for RUclips to display only videos that are less than 6 months old. This problem with outdated videos wastes time and never works because they change Windows so often that only recent videos have instructions you can follow.
Here is my situation: I currently have two mirrored drives (no storage pool) each three terabytes, and I want to get a third 3 tb drive and set up those with parity to get a total of 6 tb usable storage. But I don't have a place to copy all my data and then restore it to the parity Storage Space.
So I'm thinking if I break the mirror, then create a pool from two of the drives and create a striped storage space to get about 2.5 tb to copy all my data (risky i know), then format the first drive holding my data and add it to the pool and then create a Parity Storage Space with the leftover space from the stripe, this should give me about 3 TB of usable space on this new parity drive, copy all my data from the stripe, then remove the stripe and increase the size of the parity drive. Will this work?
Always appreciate your knowledge and tips 👍
Appreciate your feedback Rob!
tired of playing with a pair of measly 1 TB drives in a Storage Spaces Mirror; I trust the process now, and have a pair of 12 TB WD Red Plus drives inbound, which should meet all my storage needs for at least 5-6 years , based on past usage patterns...
After evaluating the cost of a pair of mirrored 10 TB drives already on order, I went ahead and ordered a 3rd drive, to enable a 3-drive parity array but of of double the storage (now 20 TB) for only 50% more cost...; should last my family of five ....forever, I'd suspect! (THose darn i-phone pics and movies take up space!)
Well taught
What happened if reinstall windows?
Thank you for comment and great question,
As this is a software base RAID and is controlled by OS, deleting the operating system will delete the configuration.
If we are in a situation where we might need to re-install the operating system, we have two options:
1. Take a backup before deleting windows and rebuild the Space after install, then restore backup
2. If supported by the Motherboard, create hardware RAID in the BIOS
This is a great question that people don’t consider. Since I reinstall windows fairly often it is not ideal.
@@AliZiyaei Incorrect. That's the beauty of being software defined storage, it can be hardware agnostic(depending). You can take the disks from your Storage Spaces pool to another machine(or the same machine with windows re-installed), import the storage spaces configuration and everything will be intact. The caveat being if you have an "upgraded pool," you can not take it to a version of Windows that hasn't been updated to allow "upgraded pools." Also ReFS is no longer supported in Windows Pro 10/11, they have made that exclusive to the Workstation versions of Windows(10/11) and of course server editions. That is unfortunate because ReFS is much more resilient/better/faster/stronger than NTFS. A Storage Spaces array built with NTFS is 50% less cool than a Storage Spaces array built with ReFS. Also, parity in Storage Spaces is a steaming pile of garbage, it is/was prohibitively slow. Recent updates have made it faster, but is still slow especially when compared to a mirror. This is well documented. IMO the only Storage Spaces config that is worth setting up(if you care about your data and the ability to use the data at any reasonable speed) is a mirror with ReFS(pay extra for the Workstation version of Windows 10/11). In that configuration Storage Spaces is fast and resilient. Disclaimer: Yes, there are scenarios where you don't need/care about speed(using parity) or resiliency(large, dense, NTFS array), in those situations of course, go ham.
@OShackHennessy - It's interesting and strange that you have problems after reinstall Windows....
In my case it was different. After a motherboard failure I had to build a new computer. I installed a new system from scratch and then put in the data disks and everything works as expected - the pool works (parity). The data was maintained. For me is ideal :)
Many RAID controllers can support more than four drives.
Great, thank you!
Thank you for your feedback!
Storage space is a software RAID and it works well as a RAID, weather it be RAID 0,1,5 etc. Just remember RAID is not a backup. I am running 5 SSDs in raid 5 now with Storage Space, but I also back it up. To ensure you don't loose data use the 3 2 1 strategy. 3 copies of your data on at least 2 different media types and 1 stored off site.
when i ran a pair of drives mirrored, got 100+ MB/sec writes; when I ran 3 drives in parity, the numbers plummeted to 32 MB/sec! Anyone else see this sort of abysmal parity write speeds?
I just updated to Windows 11 and Storage spaces just stop working. I used ReFs 3 disks in parity configuration.
Hi Ali. I have an issue with Storage Space and trying to get an answer with difficulty. I have 2 drives mirrored creating a storage pool on a Win 10 PC. I now want to remove these disks and put them into my new PC. However I do not see the option to Prepare For Removal for either disk and am unsure if can just disconnect and reconnect the disks into the new PC without any data loss. I know can backup to external drive and then delete the pool which i understand removes the data from both SATA disks but would prefer if possible to just unplug and recreate the pool in new Win 11 PC. Can you or subscribers advise regarding same please ? Thanks.
Hi Keith, Unfortunately, you can't do that, Storage Pool and Storage space in general is controlled by the operating System, the reason you do not see prepare for removal is that there are no empty disks available in your pool. removal process will transfer the data from disk to an empty one so you can move it out. the good thing in your scenario is that if both disks are in mirror mode, this means you have tow copies of your data, so you should be able to disconnect one disk without loosing any data and by connecting it to the next PC without formatting the drive you should be able to see all your information. (simply import the disk on the new computer disk management console)
@@AliZiyaei Ok thanks Ali. If I do that and all is well can I then delete the pool on original machine even with the other drive missing to return that drive to usability again ?
Yes, you can,
Once you delete the pool, you can import the disk in disk management snd you should see the content.
I highly recommend a full backup before doing any of the above as we don't know what might go wrong when touching physical disks.
Better safe than sorry
@@AliZiyaei thanks Ali. Full backup underway but sooooo sloooooowwwwwww... 🙈
Better safe than sorry
You use VMware and virtual drives.
I tried to create a storage pool with only SSD's and get an error when trying to create it.
It can't create pools with only SSD's. It works with mechanical drives, but not with SSD's
It works if you have mechanical drives and add the SSD as a cache drive.
Thanks for your comment Sten,
Actually I don't have any mechanical disks only SSD. How many disks do you have connected? I have done it on physical computers as well with SSD disks same process and same result. You just need to make sure they are empty and uninitialized
@@AliZiyaei 6 SSD's and they were all empty (no partitions on them). The error says "Can't prepare drives"
Have you tried with PowerShell?
You can use this article to learn how to do it with PowerShell,
If I find some time I will create a video for that as well, But it won't be any time soon, im sorry, it is a very busy time for me learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/storage/new-storagepool?view=windowsserver2019-ps
I have used up to 4 SSD’s to create various pools without issue so I know it works. Obviously that doesn’t help you solve your problem but I’m only confirming it can work.
@@OShackHennessy The GUI for Storage Spaces kind of suck. Many people can verify that. I managed to fix it with Power Shell and commands instead. You also get a lot more options with commands.
Is there a way to tell which drive has failed?
if you go to your Storage space, you can see the list of disk and it will indicate the failed disk
Striping on mirror makes no sense - a mirror is an exact copy. It give the performance boost as the system can choose any of the three drives to get the data. In the case of a failure you have 1 (or 2) copies of the data. I guess I don't understand the comment that the data is striped in the mirrors - unless of course Microsoft doesn't use standard definition of mirror - which knowing Microsoft wouldn't be totally suprising.
I'm not sure If I understand your question/comment,
You are completely correct Stripp on mirror does not make sense and it is not happening anywhere.
@@AliZiyaei At about 8:43 you state "Mirror spaces also stripe the data across" - that's what I was referring to.
Ok, Now I know where is the confusion,
Mirror in Storage space can be a confusing phrase, but its actually Two way mirror and three way mirror.
In two way mirror data stripes (aka data) is written on two disks, to your point identical, when we say data stripes, we mean data pieces.
and in three way mirror data is copied on two more disks (3 in total) and system can tolerate 2 disk failure.
I hope this helps.
@@AliZiyaei Ok- I work on a much larger platform. Arguably thy only have 2 way mirroring as the vendor prefers various levels of striping the data - or parity bit over mirroring. But they don't refer to the mirroring as stripes. Stripes in my world is always used in reference to checksums where the parity bit (or bits depending on level) are striped across disks.
Obviously this would be incorrect usage of the term in mirroring, rather referring to the tracks being duplicated across either 2, or 3 disks depending on whether its 2 way or 3 way mirroring.
You are absolutely correct.
I do not have remove physical disk option in a storage pool, ideas?
Do you have enough empty space on other disks to move the contents of this disk? Or have you created a pool that requires certain number of disk as minimum
Yeah it's good when it works, but good luck trying to recover data when it eventually fails or is non recognisable...