Windows 10: Add Drives to Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10

How to: Add Drives to Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10

How to Add Drives to Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10


Information create virtual drives called storage spaces. These storage spaces typically store two copies of your data so if one of your drives fails, you still have an intact copy of your data. If you run low on capacity, just add more drives to the storage pool.

These drives can be internal or external hard drives, or solid state drives. You can use a variety of types of drives with Storage Spaces, including USB, SATA, and SAS drives.

This tutorial will show you how to add drives to a storage pool for storage spaces in Windows 10.

You must be signed in as an administrator to add drives to the storage pool.



Here's How:

1. Add or connect the drive(s) that you want to add to the storage pool.

2. Open Settings, click/tap on the System icon, click/tap on Storage on the left side, and click/tap on the Manage Storage Spaces link on the right side. (see screenshot below)


Note You can also open the Control Panel (icons view), and click/tap on the Storage Spaces icon instead.





3. Click/tap on the Change settings button, click/tap on Yes if prompted by UAC, and click/tap on the Add drives link for the storage pool you want to add drives to. (see screenshot below)



4. Select (check) the disk(s) (drives) you want to add to the storage pool, check (default) or uncheck to optimize drive usage to spread existing data across all drives for what you want, and then select Add drives. (see screenshot below)


Note When you add new drives to an existing pool, it's a good idea to optimize drive usage. This will move some of your data to the newly added drive to make the best use of the pool's capacity.



Warning Windows will permanently delete all partitions and files on selected formatted drives (disks).

Be sure to back up anything you do not want to lose to another disk first.





5. The selected disk(s) (drives) will now be added to the storage pool. (see screenshot below)





Tip If you like, you can click/tap on the Change link for the storage space above to change the maximum storage space size to what you want since you just added a drive(s) to have more space available.







That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Create Storage Spaces Shortcut in Windows 10
• How to Create a New Pool and Storage Space in Windows 10
• How to Create a Storage Space for Storage Pool in Windows 10
• How to Change Storage Space in Storage Pool in Windows 10
• How to Delete a Storage Space from Storage Pool in Windows 10
• How to Rename Physical Drive in Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10
• How to Remove Drive from Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10
• How to Rename Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10
• How to Optimize Drive Usage in Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10
• How to Upgrade Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10
• How to Delete a Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10

:)

 

How to remove a bad drive in Windows 10 storage spaces pool

Could someone list the steps involved in replacing a bad drive from a Windows 10 storage spaces pool? I cannot find any info on the Microsoft support site that is specific to Windows 10. Also, could you list the steps to remove a 'good' drive and replace
it with another drive if the process is different?

 

Storage Spaces Pool - How to find enumerated drive number?


Hi All,

When creating a Storage Spaces Pool, the member drives are no longer listed in Disk Management.

My system has been hanging every so often and when I checked the Windows logs, I see a lot of critical error messages about Harddisk/DR10 having a bad block. Since Disk Management no longer lists the individual pool drives, how do I find out which DR10 is one of the pool member drives?

I've tried mini partition tool to see if it can see the drives, it doesn't. It can only see what Disk Management sees and that's only non-storage spaces pooled drives.

Many thanks!
Chuck

 

Storage pool

Hello,

Storage Spaces is a technology in Windows and Windows Server that can help protect your data from drive failures. It is conceptually similar to RAID, implemented in software. You can use Storage Spaces to group three or more drives together into a storage pool
and then use capacity from that pool to create Storage Spaces. These typically store extra copies of your data so if one of your drives fails, you still have an intact copy of your data. If you run low on capacity, just add more drives to the storage pool.

In setting up a storage space, it's recommended that you use a hard drive that doesn't contain important files as the drive will be formatted to mirror the host drive.

For more information regarding Storage Spaces, read this
FAQ page.

Hope the information I provided helps.

 

Windows 10 Storage Spaces Improvements?

We just released a couple of new Storage Spaces features with the
Windows 10 November update:

• Optimize drive usage to make the best use of all of your drives after adding drives
• Safely remove a drive from a pool by automatically moving data off the drive and onto other drives in the pool.

To make use of these features you'll have to install the
Windows 10 November update. Our latest Help content briefly covers the new Storage Spaces functionality:

Storage Spaces in Windows 10

Cheers!

Jason Gerend - Senior Content Developer for Storage Spaces

 

When adding a journal for storage spaces, is the journal added to the storage pool or a the storage space?

I'm planning to create 2 storage spaces, 1 for backup and 1 for my main data. I was going to add 1 journal to each storage space, but it looks like the journal applies to the storage pool, not the storage space. Is that the case? if it is, is the better
approach to add 2 SSD drives to the storage pool as journals? If I add 2 drives as journals, how do I change the friendly name of the drives? Both of my drives that I want to use as journals have the same exact name.

Thanks,

Mike