Windows 10: I compared the speeds of a two-drive Storage Spaces mirror vs a Disk Management mirror and...

I'll try to keep this short. Basically, I've got two 5TB drives that I want to mirror and get the highest performance possible via software RAID. I'm not interested in a hardware RAID right now so I'd like to just focus this conversation on Storage Spaces vs Disk Management (both built into Windows). I've ran multiple speed tests using Crystal Disk Mark to see if I can spot a difference in performance when I mirror the drives using Storage Spaces vs Disk Management.

Using the default settings of Crystal Disk Mark I got these results (using the 128 MiB test option):

Storage Spaces Mirror

Disk Management Mirror

Comparing these two results led me to believe that Storage Spaces perform inferior to Disk Management. However, I then changed the Profile setting in Crystal Disk Mark from Default to Real World Performance and I got these results:

Storage Spaces Mirror (Real World Test)

Disk Management Mirror (Real World Test)

In this second case, I'd say Storage Spaces had the slight edge. I then performed an additional test by copying large video footage from an external drive to a Storage Spaces mirror vs Disk Management mirror, and my speeds were basically identical, though they could have just been bottlenecked by the external drive...

So what gives? In the regular testing, Disk Management smashed Storage Spaces pretty hard, but with the "Real World" profile, they're more on par. I guess what it comes down to now is, what, if any, advantages does one method have over the other? If not speed, what about other features? Any help would be appreciated.

submitted by /u/sevansup
[link] [comments]

:)

 

Mirror Command in Disk Management or Storage Space commands

I am using Windows 10 Pro on a Desktop. I have a number of internal hard drives all set to AHCI and 1 USB 3 external drive. All my drives show up in devices and Disk Management and I am able to access all drives and made sure all drives include me as the
administrator owner. The problem is I am rethinking how I want to store data and I have 2 identical Sata 3 drives, one of which has all my data and I cleared the second drive because I wanted to mirror the data drive on it. I also have 2 drives which I previously
spanned and they show as spanned in Disk Management.

So my problem is this - Even though I have Win Pro the Mirror command is blanked out in Disk Management and if I go to manage storage spaces only the USB3 drive even shows up. I can't create any new storage spaces and none of my drives are even listed.

Any idea as to what is going on? I had installed a new MB, memory and Video card but all the drives are from a previous build. So that is why I went and checked ownership of every drive to make sure I was in control. Everything else on this computer is working
fine.

 

Storage spaces retired disk in mirror - drive seems ok


Hi all - have set up a mirror configuration in storage spaces of 2 4TB drives. I have got a waning that there is a problem and in the storage spaces GUI it shows as one drive been retired (a seagate ST4000DM000) and need replacing. I run a short test of the drive with SeaTools and it passed the test fine so I wonder what I should do and how: Is there a way to un-retire a disk and try it again? is my only option to buy a new disk? if I buy a disk do I need to unplug all the drives in the meantime for fear of corrupted data because the mirror is not working? when the drive is retired is it still used by storage spaces to mirror the data?
any advice will be welcomed

 

Windows Storage Spaces -- Replacing a Failed Disk [Two-way Mirror]

Thought I'd pass along some testing I recently performed with Microsoft's Storage Spaces on Windows 10. I wanted to see the process of replacing a 'failed' drive in a Two-way mirror. The good news is that it's pretty simple.

I started out with a Windows 10 Home Desktop with an existing Two-Way mirror. The Desktop computer was configured with three drives -- A single 500 GB SSD hosting the operating system and two identical 1 TB SSDs hosting my data on a Microsoft Storage Spaces Two-way mirror.

In looking at Control Panel; Storage Spaces... This was the original set-up...





From here I simulated a disk 'failure' by disconnecting one of my 1 TB SSD's [SamsungSSD2] from my Desktop's motherboard SATA port. This created a 'Notification' about the Storage Space





Although now 'missing' SSD2, the Storage Space could still be accessed normally thru Explorer and you could read/write files as needed without any problems. No changes were evident in Disk Management either.

Now on to installing a replacement drive. In my case a duplicate SSD which I had available for this 'test'.

In looking at Control Panel; Storage Spaces you can see that the Desktop computer was operating with a 'Reduced Resiliency' Two-way mirror Storage Space. With the specific problem being 'SamsungSSD2'





At this point I attached the replacement SSD to the computer followed by selecting 'Add drives' in Manage Storage Spaces





Storage Spaces automatically found my replacement drive which I added to the Pool. Manage Storage Spaces reflected the increased Pool capacity due to the added drive which it recognized with a status of 'OK'









Need to clean-up the configuration by deleting the failed SamsungSSD2 disk from the Two-way mirror Storage Space.





Manage Storage Spaces is now showing the 'new' configuration with SamsungSSD1 and the replacement 'Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB' Physical Drives





Now we're off and running with a repaired Two-way mirror and our replacement drive