Windows 10: How do I add & configure a brand new NVME as a cache drive to my existing Storage Spaces...

Within Storage Spaces, can I add a cache drive on top of the existing storage pool? Do I need to backup and reformat the drives to implement? Can this be done via GUI or do I need to use the PowerShell commands to set it up?

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:)

 

How do I establish a journal in Windows 10 storage spaces?

Awesome, thanks!

How much slower would it be with an HDD? It would still be faster than a storage space without a journal wouldn't it?

Since I assume the cache on the drive needs to be flushed periodically, is there a drive size that is just "too small"? For example, if I have a 120 GB drive, would it be flushing the cache too much to
make it worthwhile?

Definitely helps. Appreciate the info.

 

Storages Spaces Configuration

Progress Update

I’ve had success but it has not been without a lot of pain and time.

Major issues for me.

• With my first attempts I was NOT able to create a Storage Space. As I research the issue I discovered one post that stated I could NOT have either a software or hardware RAID on the same system. At this time I did have the “LSI SAS9211-8I 8 Port” card installed.
  I’ve discovered that the card was set as a RAID card. At that time I was NOT able to get into the card BIOS and change any of the settings or software, thus I removed the card.
• After removing the card I was able to create the Storage Space but this was not without discover of another issue. I wanted to use Parity which is like RAID 5 and I also wanted to use the ReFS file format. Initially because of my choices (Parity and ReFS)
  I could NOT create the Storage Space and discovered that MS does not support this combination but in the setup they allow you to select Parity and ReFS To resolve the issue I picked Parity and NTFS, this allowed me to create the Storage Space.
• Another challenge was setting the value for maximum size for the storage space. As I understand it is best to establish a huge max size thus as you add more disk you do not hit the max size limit. If you hit the max size limit then it will be necessary
  to create a new storage space with a huge max size, move the contents of the first storage space to the new storage space. This would be super time consuming and require a lot of hard drives as temp holding space. After many attempts I settled on a max size
  of 50TB and with the three drives, 1-3TB, 1-4TB, 1-6TB, I had a space with 11.8TB and a max size of 50TB. This should be more than enough space for my data for the living years I have left remaining.
  
  
  
  

Thus I finally had a workable storage space and my next step was to copy my “data” files to the new storage space so I kicked off all the necessary copy actions to copy the data. I used the high-level folder as my starting point. Following are two images
showing the action. As you can see some have completed and some have a VERY long time remaining, e.g. 1913 minutes = 231 hours or about 10 days. I realize that all the copy actions are using the same drives thus this is a performance hit but it is a lot faster
than me running one copy at a time thus forcing me to start another copy when one completed. But the actual performance hit is less than the time I would lose by the time gap between a copy finishing and me starting another copy. However there does seem to
be a huge performance overhead with Storage Spaces. Originally I had to move the contents of the three drives in the Storage Space and if I recall this was completed in less than 4 days.









After the copy to the storage space completes I see the following as the next steps.

• Share the storage space with full privileges so all my other PCs can access the drives. This is quick task and should take less than 10 minutes.
• Test to ensure all PCs can access the storage space. This is a bit more time and should take 1-2 hours.
• Change ALL applications on ALL PCs to use the new storage space and confirm that all is working correctly. This could easily take a couple of days.
• Use Hard Disk Sentinel (HDS) to reinitialize disk surface. This is an extensive test and will take about four days to test both drives being freed up, e.g. the 4TB and 6TB that currently have my data on them.
• The HDS 4TB drive test will finish at least a day or two before the 6TB completes, when it does I could add it to the existing Storage pool or just wait until the 6TB HDS completes and add it to the storage pool. If I wait for the 6TB drive this would give
  me a bit over 17TB for my data. I feel that this will be more than enough to last me for whatever years I have left.

At the same time I’m doing the above I can also work on the LSI SAS9211-8I 8 Port card and get it working, this will be for all of my backups. I have contacted LSI support via email and they did send information. Some of the info I was able to implement
and others presented a problem for me. I sent a follow-up email last night but most likely will not get an answer until Monday. I was expecting a reply but so far no reply.

After I get the card working I can create another parity storage space for all of my backups. Currently I have five drives connected to the card, 2-1TB drives, 1-1.5TB drive, 2-2TB drives.

After I create the backup storage space, setup full permissions so all systems can access and confirm the access, the following steps will be performed. These will take several days or weeks.

• Copy data from one backup drive. I currently have as backup drives, 2-2TB, 7-3TB, 3-6TB, to the temp drives attached to the card. I will start with a 3TB drive. By starting with a 3TB drive this will ensure I can replace one of the 1TB drives without space
  issues on the storage space. When I complete the backup storage space build it will have the 3-6TB drives and 2 or 3 3TB drives assigned to the space. This will provide between 23-26TB of storage for backups. If I need more space I can purchase a 10TB drive
  and replace one of the 3TB drives. Thus I’m playing a lot of musical chairs to get to the final build.
• Confirm that all the backup data has been removed from the drive to the backup storage space
• Change the necessary applications to use the backup storage space.
• Confirm that apps are successfully using the backup storage space.
• After the copy completes run the HDS test on the old drive. BTW the test level I’m using wipes out any data on the disk

After the HDS test completes remove the smallest drive from the backup storage space and add the drive that just completed the HDS test

 

Storages Spaces Configuration

I've read a lot about Storage Spaces but I've not taken the big step at this time and would appreciate suggestions for the best setup. I have a large tower that will hold a total of 10 drives. My boot drive is a 500GB SSD and this will NOT be part of storage
spaces. My main concern is to protect my data (Libraries) and System (OS) backups of my four PCs. Currently I use a windows application (Syncback PRO) to run nightly backups of my data and have the original and two backup copies of all the data. I use Acronis
True Image to capture nightly incremental backups of the OS (4 PCs) and keep seven generations only because I have been burned when trying to restore something and could not find it in generations 1-4. At this time I devote about 21TB to backups (this is my
data and system backups) and devote about 13 TB to data.

My initial thoughts was to create one huge storage pool using double parity and just put everything in it. This would provide two drive failure. Second option - Another thought is to create two pools, one for my data and the other for backups. If I go with
the 2nd option just because of hard drive physical space limitations (I only have room for 10 drives) I'd go with single parity, this would provide protection with only 1 drive failure.

In the past I used a RAID 5 configuration for my backups but I was at the point where I needed a larger capacity which required purchasing 8 new larger drives all the same size (big expense), dumping everything to temp drives (lots of time and more drives
are needed) from the existing RAID, creating a new RAID with the new larger drives and then copying everything from the temp drives to the new RAID (lots of time). The problem with RAID 5 is that it only provides one drive failure and over the period of using
the RAID 5 I had a total of 3 drives fail.

The huge advantage of Storage Spaces is that I can use different size drives, I can add drives as needed, I can replace smaller drives with larger drives as needed.

I realize that it will be necessary for me to purchase a controller card so I can add more drives to my tower, my mother board has 8 ports and currently they are all being used. All of my other drives are attached via USB and several are on USB hubs.