Here is how to use Microsoft Storage Spaces safely
In this article you will find out:
- how to work with Microsoft Storage Spaces
- how to protect your data
Are you ready? Let's read!
About Storage Spaces
Microsoft Storage Spaces is a built-in Windows technology that groups multiple disks into a storage pool to create virtual disks with storage space names. This technology can help users or organizations protect their data from disk failure, provide data redundancy through dedicated data distribution mechanisms (mirroring), and expand storage space by adding drivers to the PC.
Creating storage spaces is a very good idea, as after a few years of use, 10% of hard drives fail; therefore, organizations need to be aware of this threat and provide redundancy of their data prematurely. It is this condition that can be achieved with the help of such capabilities of disk spaces.
You can group multiple disks into a single unified storage pool, so you have additional copies of your data and failures of one disk will not damage your data. It should be noted that the Microsoft Storage Spaces feature is supported in Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016.
How to use
PC
To do this, you need to purchase preferably three disks: one of them is a boot disk, and the other two disks can be internal or external, and SSD.
Now, to create disk space in Windows 10, add the selected disks: type Storage Spaces in the search box and select the option you want. Then click the Create a new pool and storage space button and select the required disks and click Create New Storage Pool. Enter the required drive name, letter and layout, and then select a data distribution mechanism and set the maximum size of disk space. Finally, click Create Disk Space and upgrade your pools after upgrading to Windows 10.
Standalone Servers
You must have one or more storage pools to simplify storage management, but you can create multiple virtual disks from a storage pool that Windows recognizes as traditional discs. Alternatively, you can create a virtual disk through the File and Storage Services interface.
Clustered Servers
Using storage on each node in the cluster is a great cost-effective option, as NAS and SAN arrays will require additional costs. Storage Spaces technology works in conjunction with tiered storage, caching, RDMA networking, erase encoding, and you can use NVMe drives to improve performance.
In order to deploy local disk space, you need to do the following:
Add the appropriate domain accounts to the operating system and install all the necessary functions.
Next, we set up the network, clean up the disks and partitions.
After that, create clusters, configure the witness server, enable Storage Spaces Direct, and deploy your virtual machines.
RAID comparison
If we compare Storage Spaces vs RAID, then there are certain nuances:
1. RAID can be either software or hardware, and Windows Storage Spaces is a pure software component that supports preparation via a graphical interface or command line.
2. RAID disks are a single unit, which inevitably leads to wasted space, and disk spaces are separate disks that are independent of each other.
3. When it comes to performance, hardware RAID will be the most efficient.
4. From a financial point of view, disk space can be much more attractive as it does not require large investments in additional hardware.
5. However, hardware RAID has a socket limitation, and Windows 10 disk spaces and software RAID do not.
6. In addition, Windows Storage Spaces has its own additional benefits, namely no fees and data protection. Also, if users are using SSD, it is recommended to create disk spaces.
Make sure your high disk data is safe!
To maximally and safely protect data in disk space or raid, feel free to use DiskInternals RAID Recovery. It recovers files from damaged RAID 0, RAID 5, 50, 5EE, RAID 1, 1 + 0, 1E, RAID 4.5R, RAID 6, RAID 60 and JBOD. It is also possible to recover folders and files from the motherboard. With RAID support from Intel, NVIDIA and VIA, with a RAID recovery rate of over 97% based on DiskInternals' 15 years of experience in the field.
Be sure to use this guide step by step using DiskInternals RAID Recovery on Windows 7, 8, 8.1,10, Vista, or Windows Server 2003-2019.
So, go to the site of the DiskInternals RAID Recovery program and click the “Download” button, after downloading, open the executable file and install it on your computer. Open the application and be sure to use the Wizard; he will be your mentor for the rest of the recovery process.
Then select an array to search for data and click Next to start a specific scan: full recovery, quick recovery or shallow recovery.
After that, you will see all the files found and get free access to them exclusively for reading. That is, after looking at the data you need, you should be tempted to restore it and export it to a new proper device. And this can be done by purchasing an application license and becoming the owner of the application.