Windows 10: I want to know if I set up a mirrored storage space over 3 x 8tb drives if that will give...

I'm trying to find out some information on using an odd number of drives in storage spaces.

I’ve got a pc with 4 available SATA ports. One of which is my os drive and I want to use the other 3 for storage with some redundancy.

I am using HP Microserver Gen 8.


I want to know if I set up a mirrored storage space over 3 x 8tb drives if that will give me 12tb of redundancy or would I need to add another 8tb drive and get 16tb of redundancy?

Also I want to know how storage spaces mirror deals with odd numbers of drives.


Thanks

:)

 

Windows Storage Spaces Capacity Issue

I have an issue with Windows Storage Spaces. I have roughly 6.5TB worth of data. I have a Storage Space with 4 drives in a 2-way mirror. This is my ‘F’ drive. 2 of the drives are 2TB. 2 drives are 5TB. Windows reports this as 9.27TB. Windows is reporting
2TB free. Storage is reporting space is full on the F drive. Storage Spaces is correct and Windows is confused because 2 way mirror with 4 drives/different capacities.

So I was playing around with Storage Spaces and expanded the ‘drive’ from 9 to 12TB. This was an error and will come to haunt me later. I realize now you cannot reduce the storage size. I am not sure why I did this but Storage Spaces on the F drive now
wants more drives for more capacity. Most likely to meet my unwanted 12TB expansion.

I then had an idea. I will just build a new Storage Space with a 6.5TB worth of capacity. So I went ahead and brought 3 4TB drives. This should in theory give 7 – 8TB. So installed these drives. Then I attempted to create a new 8TB – ‘K’ drive. Then
I would assign these 3 new drives just to this Storage Space. Then copy my data over from the F to the K drive. This all worked out nicely in my head.

I attempted to do the above and Storage Space Creation failed at an 8TB creation of the Space. Probably because it does not have nearly enough space because – I expanded the F drive from earlier, even if everything is thin provisioned.

So I said maybe if I just create a Storage Space – K and then expand the capacity of this Space it will work. This is not working either. So now I have a 9.7 but really 12TB – F Storage Space. Then a 2TB K drive – I cannot expand.

I realize now when you add disks to Storage Spaces you cannot assign the drive to ‘X’ Storage Space. All disks basically become party of the ‘pool’. So these drives basically appear to belong to both the F and K Storage Spaces.

So what are my options?

• Backup the data on the F drive. (I use Veeam – and my backup is an 8TB external drive) Destroy both the F and K drive. Then start over and use parity. Restore the data back to the new storage space. This is probably the easiest option but my data only
  exists in 1 spot locally. (I also backup my data to the cloud)
• Create a RAID – hardware or software with these 3 new drives. Copy the data over to this new RAID – K drive. Destroy the F drive from Storage Space. Recreate the ‘F’ drive using parity from Storage Spaces. I will have plenty of capacity – between 9
  – 10TB. Then copy the data over from the RAID – K drive back to the F drive. This plan would work to just lots of time and riskier with moving this much data multiple times.
• The reason I am posting here… someone knows more about Storage Spaces than I do and can offer a different/better solution.

Thanks.

 

Storage Spaces Mirror 2 Drives?

Actually... no. If you plug out a mirror from a Storage Spaces mirror and plug into another Windows 10 machine, it will first warn you that a Storage Space is in trouble, but seconds later your plugged mirror is fully available. I just tried.
Interesting enough, you can keep working and modifying your now "reduced resiliency" space. When you plug the missing drive back to your real Storage Spaces machine it gets in sync and back to normal.

I came here looking for some more experienced users having tried this before, but I see that it's a bit crazy and no one has tried it. So far, I'm starting to believe this is a great way to have an always updated roaming media storage.
I wonder what would happen if the roaming media gets modified, it would be overwritten once back in the mirror?

 

Storage Spaces Mirror 2 Drives?


I'm hoping someone here might have experience with mirroring 2 drives in Windows 10. I'm reading How-to's but some of my basic questions remain unanswered.

I have an SSD (C) used for the OS and loading apps and a 2TB drive that holds for all my files, images and videos, etc.

I want to add a second 2TB drive and create a Storage Spaces 'Mirror' setup to offer redundancy in case the D drive fails. (I also have off-site of backups). From what I've read the mirrored drives will need to be formatted so I will have to backup and re-copy all the current data onto the Mirrored set.

But here's the question:

Will a single mirrored drive behave like a single drive if it's removed from the set and connected to another computer?

Does the file and folder structure of one of those mirrored drives offer access to the files if it's removed and accessed using a removable SATA dock on another computer?

Thanks for any help with this question.