How to use Storage Spaces in Windows 11/10

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Windows Home Server Drive Extender technology has now been discontinued, but its concept has been preserved and improved upon in the new Windows characteristic called Storage Spaces. With Storage Spaces, physical disks can be grouped into Pools, and these pools are then carved up into Spaces, which are formatted with a regular file-organization and are used mean solar day-to-twenty-four hours just like regular disks. These disks tin can be connected either through USB, SATA, or SAS. This feature brings the safety of RAID and allows expanding space to store files – all at a lower price.

The feature provides two basic services:

Data redundancy: Makes sure there are at least two copies of data, each living on a different disk, helping to prevent any accidental data loss in case there is a hard disk failure. For example, you can save files to two or more drives so that your file remains safe even if the drive fails.
Single pool of storage: Helps y'all puddle different physical drives together into one logical drive. In brusque, organizes physical disks into storage pools, which tin can exist easily expanded by simply adding disks only handled every bit a unmarried entity.

Gear up Storage Spaces in Windows 11/ten

To create a puddle and a mirrored space, go to the 'Control Panel'. Press Win+X to bring upward the power chore carte du jour and from at that place, choose 'Command Panel'. Adjacent, click 'System and Security', and and then 'Storage Spaces'.

When a window shows up, select the 'Create a new pool and storage infinite' choice. Next, select the drives to create a storage pool. Recall, if the selected drives comprise files you will lose them all and won't be able to recover them from Recycle Bin.

Next, select a proper noun, layout, and size for the storage space.

To add more disks to the electric current pool, simply select the drives to be added and hit the 'Add drives' option.

Soon after that, you volition observe the procedure of creating a pool in progress. Here, you can rename the pool if yous would similar too.

To create additional parity space, click 'Create a shortage infinite so cull 'Parity' from the layout options.

While creating a storage pool, if y'all run out of capacity you will see a notification similar this:

If such a example, click on the notification to go some information and attempt to fix it.

That'southward all you need to do to create storage Spaces and start using it like any other disk!

When you add new drives to an existing pool, information technology'south a proficient idea to optimize drive usage. This will movement some of your data to the newly added drive to make the best utilize of the pool's capacity. Information technology'll happen by default when you lot add a new drive to an upgraded pool in Windows —y'all'll see a check box for Optimize to spread existing data beyond all drives selected when y'all add together the drive. Still, if you cleared that check box or added drives before upgrading a puddle, you'll demand to manually optimize bulldoze usage. To do so, type Storage Spaces in the search box on the taskbar, select Storage Spaces from the list of search results, and then select Optimize drive usage.

Read: Create and Manage Storage Spaces from Windows Settings.

Paradigm Credits: Microsoft.

Anand Khanse is the Admin of TheWindowsClub.com, a ten-yr Microsoft MVP (2006-16) & a Windows Insider MVP. Delight read the unabridged post & the comments first, create a System Restore Point before making any changes to your arrangement & be conscientious nearly any third-party offers while installing freeware.