Storage Spaces in Windows 10 is a feature that lets you group drives of different sizes and types into one resource pool so that you can create a virtual drive or storage space. To create this storage space, you must have one extra drive in addition to the drive where you have Windows installed. This can be an internal drive, an external drive, or a solid state drive. There is no restriction on the type of drives you can use for Storage Spaces. It can be a USB, SATA, or SAS drive.
You can use any number of drives for the purpose, but you don’t have to create storage spaces with all your drives. And you can create storage pools that are larger than the amount of physical storage space that you have available. For example, if you have 3 drives of 100GB capacity each, you can create a storage pool with just 2 drives. Although the physical storage is 200GB, you can create a storage pool of 1000GB and simply plug in additional drives as and when the physical storage fills up.
How to Create Storage Spaces
Now that you have an idea of what Storage Spaces is, let’s see how to create Storage Spaces in Windows 10.
1. If you haven’t connected any drives yet, connect the drives you want to add to your computer. If you want to connect a drive that has been formatted and contains data, all the data will be erased at the time of pooling. Therefore, make sure you have a backup of your data or use an unformatted drive.
2. Open up the Storage Spaces configuration window. On the Windows 10 taskbar, in the Search box, type Storage Spaces. Select the option from the results displayed.
2. In the Manage Storage Spaces screen, click the Create a new pool and storage space link.
3. In the next screen, you will see the drives that are connected. Select the drives that you want to add to create the storage pool.
4. Then click Create Pool.
5. In the next screen, enter a name for the storage space and keep it descriptive so that you don’t get confused later. Then select a Drive letter and file system. The default NTFS file name is fine, but you can also choose REFS (Resilient File System) which is a relatively new local file system.
6. Next, select the resiliency type. Resiliency decides how Windows will handle your data. Windows 10 Storage Spaces offers 4 types of resiliency. Pick a type depending on what you want to accomplish.
None: Windows will store a single copy of your data and you will lose the data if one of your drives fails.
Simple: This storage space allows you to write one copy of your data. It does not protect you from drive failures. Use this option if you are only interested in available space and drive speed.
Two-way mirror: This option allows you to write 2 copies of your data on the drives. This can protect you if one of your drive’s fail. This option requires at least 2 drives to work and the drawback is that the more data you write on your disk, the more storage space will be consumed.
Three-way mirror: This option works just like the above option, except that it writes 3 copies instead of 2. It naturally goes that you will need at least 3 drives to work and you will protection in case 2 of your drives fail.
Parity: This option also requires 3 drives to work and it writes your data with parity information. This will protect your data from a single driver failure. This option is preferred if you have large files that are not frequently updated. Although parity uses drive space more efficiently, the file access times tend to be slower.
7. Next, select the size you want to allocate. You can pick any size even if you don’t have the physical storage space. When the space is not available, you will get an alert in the Notification Center to add more physical storage.
8. Next, click Create storage space.
The Manage Storage Spaces page will hold details of your storage space such as the usage, drives used and so on. You can also create multiple storage spaces in the same manner as above. Your newly created storage space will be available in File Explorer as a normal drive with a single drive letter.
Managing Storage Spaces
After creating your storage space, you can visit the Manage Storage Spaces section to view information about it and perform other actions.
Adding New Drives to a Storage Pool
You can add new drives to a storage pool when the physical storage is exhausted.
1. Go to the Manage Storage Spaces screen by searching for Storage Spaces in the Search box on the Task Bar.
2. In the Storage Pool section, click Add drives.
3. The drives that are available will appear. Select the drive you want to add. Make sure that the Optimize drive usage to spread existing data across all drives option is enabled. Click Add drives.
How to Change the Storage Space Size
You can change the name, drive letter as size of the storage space, but you cannot change the resiliency or file system.
1. Go to the Manage Storage Spaces screen by searching for Storage Spaces in the Search box on the Task Bar.
2. In the Storage Spaces section, click Change.
3. In the next screen, you can change the name of the storage space, drive letter and size.
4. When all the changes are complete, click Change storage space.
How to Optimize Drive Usage
The Optimize Drive Usage option is useful when you are adding a new drive to the storage space. The option allows data to be moved to the new drive to utilize the pool and capacity more efficiently. The option for optimization is usually available when you add a new drive (as mentioned above). However, if you did not turn on that option before, you can do it manually from the Manage Storage Spaces screen.
1. Go to the Manage Storage Spaces screen by searching for Storage Spaces in the Search box on the Task Bar.
2. In the Storage Spaces section, click Optimize drive usage. Your PC performance may be slow during this time.
How to Remove a Drive from Storage Pool
When you have connected a drive to the Storage Pool, you cannot disconnect the drive abruptly. This will cause loss of data apart from many other problems. However, you can still remove a drive by removing the data to other drives. To do this:
1. Go to the Manage Storage Spaces screen by searching for Storage Spaces in the Search box on the Task Bar.
2. In the Storage Spaces section, expand the Physical drives dropdown.
3. Click the Prepare for removal link.
4. Click Remove on the selected drive.
5. Finally, click Remove to complete the process.
After you remove the drive, it will no longer be available in File Explorer. To reformat the drive in question, you must go to the Disk Management section. Let’s see how to do that.
1. Right-click the Start button and click Disk Management.
2. Right-click the drive marked Unallocated and select New Simple Volume.
3. Follow the instructions on the screen to format the drive. Ensure that NTFS is selected for File system and Perform a quick format option is checked.
The drive that you just removed can now be reused again.
How to Delete a Storage Space
If you no longer need a storage space, you can delete it by following these steps:
1. Go to the Manage Storage Spaces screen by searching for Storage Spaces in the Search box on the Task Bar.
2. In the Storage Spaces section, click Delete. Note that deleting a storage space will also delete all the data it contains. You can recover any such data only if you have a previous backup.
3. Click Delete storage space.
How to Delete a Storage Pool
A storage pool can be deleted only if it contains no storage space. You first need to remove all the storage spaces created you created in a pool to delete a storage pool. To delete a storage pool:
1. Go to the Manage Storage Spaces screen by searching for Storage Spaces in the Search box on the Task Bar.
2. Click Delete pool.
3. Then click Delete pool to complete the process.
Once you delete a pool, the drive will have to be reformatted through Disk Management. Only then it will be visible in File Explorer.
Conclusion
Now that you have an in-depth idea about Storage Spaces in Windows 10, you should be able to use and manage Storage Spaces on your own. If you want more technical information about Storage Spaces, you can find it at the Microsoft Developer page.
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