Windows 10: Storage space issue: low capacity; pool usage = 99% but actual usage around 40%

Hi MS Support,


I'm having an issue where storage space displayed wrong pool storage usage. I have 4x4TB drive configured with storage space parity setup. All 4 of them displayed 99.x% capacity used, resulted as the following warning message: "low capacity, add 3 drives". In windows explorer, the drive display correct actual usage. Why this happened? How to fix this issue?


Setup info

Windows 10 Pro 2004 with latest update.

4x4TB HDD with Storage space parity setup Filesystem: ReFS



:)

 

Storage Spaces - created a Raid 0 with Powershell but the Manage Storage Spaces UI doesn't show correct pool capacity usage

To upgrade my old blu-ray storage disks, I created a new 3 disk, 3 column Simple pool using the process described here:

Storage Spaces - trying to create a Raid 0 with Powershell

It seems to have worked correctly and it is reporting 3 columns, vs 1 column with previous 4 disc Simply Storage Space. However, it shows 100% pool usage in Storage Spaces UI for this pool vs. the actual number in the 1 column pool which was set up via
the UI (I noticed it is the same in the linked Answers process). Windows Explorer correctly shows the data and space remaining on the pooled drive letter.

Question:

1. Are the steps in the linked "answers" post accurate?

2. Assume they are, is there a way to get Storage Spaces to report space usage correctly?

3. If there isn't, is there anything that I might need to be concerned about given that is working and Explorer reports usage correctly?

 

Query about Storage Space Usage in Windows 10 VMware

I can confirm with windows explorer that I'm (somehow) only using 43.9 MB of the available 9.87 GB of the storage space drive, so why does this screen show 3.5 GB in use, and the drive stats show
somewhere between 18 and 25% usage?

You are seeing this because your drives are really low capacity (5GB each). The space is consumed by the Storage Spaces meta data to provide drive resiliency. The space is consumed by having multiple copies of the file allocation table, the block allocator
and the file system itself. This small overhead is inherent in all software RAID solutions.

Also why do the 5 GB drives provide 4.01 GB pool capacity, but the total pool capacity is 12.7 GB?

Because you selected parity protection. Parity will need around 1/3rd of the space reserved for parity data, therefore you lose that data from your pool. This is shown in the Total Pool Capacity of 12.7GB and Available Pool Capacity of 7.75GB. So basically
7.75GB is the usable part.

I can understand 10 GB including resiliency being 15 GB, but I don't understand why my space fills up @ roughly half total drive space;

Try not to think of it like RAID. Basically Storage Spaces works at the data block level. So if you have 100GB of data that you want to store, Storage Spaces will eat 150GB from the pool to store that data in a parity configuration. In order to get a proper
feel for Storage Spaces make sure the drives are 25GB minimum.

In terms of NAS vs Storage Spaces ... if you're not planning on sharing your storage then stick with Storage Spaces. If you need to have a storage solution for multiple PCs than NAS is the way to go.

-Sam

 

storage pool, cannot change or delete in W10

Hi, Kevien99C,

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. It'll happen by default when you add a new drive to an upgraded pool
in Windows 10—you'll see a check box for Optimize to spread existing data across all drives selected when you add the drive. However, if you cleared that check box or added drives before upgrading a pool, you'll need to manually optimize drive 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.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12438/...