Windows 10: 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.

:)

 

Storage pools, update pool with RAID10

170mbps write in parity? thats insane, all i get is 30mbps in either software or hardware, i think ill go with hardware 10 since i can achieve speeds of 300mbps in both write and read.

So its normal for storage space in 2 level mirror to eat up 50% more space even tho it still writes mirrored data? Isnt its highly ineffective since for each 10gb, storage space writes around 25gb compared to typical mirroring?

 

Storage Spaces - Is there a calculator ?

Ben,

I realise this hasn't been answered in a few months, but I thought I'd fill this in other users of Storage Spaces. Basically people tend to think about Storage Space like a traditional RAID type set up. It doesn't quite work that way. Storage Space provide
data resiliency from data corruption such as bit rot and device failure. You stated that you wanted to pool 3 drives which total 10TB of space. For a 3 drive set up you only have 2 options, a 2-way mirror space and a parity space or both. A 2-way mirror consumes
space using a factor of 2 so the 10TB / 2 = 5TB of usable space. A parity space consumes space using a factor of 1.5, so the 10TB / 1.5 = 6.66TB of space. Storage spaces is very flexible and adding an additional drive to the pool would move your current data
around to make the most use of the additional space that you added. The reason you are seeing a small figure for your parity space is because your 3rd volume is only 2TB in size so it can only yield 3.63TB of space used. If you want to overcome this hurdle
you could create 2 spaces on a single pool, a mirror and a parity. Let me know if this answers your original question. Thanks.

Sam

 

It's a bit pointless as a lot of space will be wasted and if one is infected so will the other. If you use disk imaging you can have lots of backup spanning a few months that is creating images not cloning

 

Hi,

No and no.
Storage Space will convert the two HDDs into Dynamic Disks. If you remove one then that volume is broken an can no longer be read from.

See also:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...(v=vs.85).aspx

Yep. All it the takes is an installed copy of the backup software where the image can then be loaded. Macrium Reflect would be perfect for that.

Cheers, *Wink

 

I thought that when you 'mirrored' one disk with another the same data would simply be written to both disks simultaneously.

 

Hi,

Sure but the file table is different compared to a basic disk so this idea won't work for what you want to do.
Basically you create a "pool" of two disks, in your case a two way mirror.

You can move this "pool" from one machine to another but it not just a part of it.

Cheers, *Wink

 

Thanks everyone for the info. So, if one disk fails then the mirror can be restored - but each disk on it's own cannot be accessed as a traditional disk.

I'm not looking for a solution that's virus proof nor one that would survive a loss of the whole computer (fire, theft, etc..). External backups will still be done - just not as often.

 

Hi,

You could always give it a try but in case of a mirrored drive I doubt it.
A traditional "pool" of a number of disks can be broken up and hooked up to a different machine BTW.

This is how it works:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/...nd-efficiency/

Cheers, *Wink

 

mirroring isnt virus proof as if you get a virus its mirrored to the other drive with images you can have several known clean one and roll back if an update goes wrong if an update goes wrong on mirror you have no roll back

 

Hi,

The idea is to mirror storage space, not the OS.

Cheers, *Wink

 

Same thing is true get ransomwere and all data is encrypted

 

Here's the whole story: I'm looking at this as a solution for an older person who is not disciplined enough to do proper backups and if her current data disk fails it will be a big loss for her. I have a virus free backup of her OS/Apps SSD (I use Paragon) as well as her files - all safely stored elsewhere. But it looked like Storage Spaces was MS's version of Apple's 'Time machine' and would provide increased security for those files that are created between the backups. Obviously if she's hit by a serious virus and/or ransomware she'll lose whatever files were created after the last real backup. But in her case I feel that a hard disk failure is a greater risk and that's why I'm considering a 2-disk mirror.

 

I'd be tempted to use file history for this situation using a disk that is not permanently connected (an external USB disk say). Just plug it in once a week and unplug it when it is finished - there is no need to actually click on anything or take any option to do anything.

Having disk mirroring would protect against hardware failure of one of the disks (as would scheduling backups from one disk to another to a lesser extent). Neither would protect against ransomware as it would encrypt all attached disks.

With file history backups of changed documents are stored on C drive and flushed out to the backup disk when it is connected. If you leave it too long it pops up a message and tells you to plug in the backup disk. It is more similar than other solutions to Time Machine as you can flip back and forwards through time to find different versions of changed documents. It also holds copies of deleted documents which mirroring wouldn't. Backups would have copies of deleted documents but they are harder to find if you don't know when you deleted it.

In a way File History is preferable to just backups as you would have to lose both your OS and data disks to lose documents while with scheduled backups if you lost the data disk you would lose everything since the last backup.

You can do more that one of course. I use File history and make macrium backups. I have a laptop so it isn't practical but if I had a desktop (and data I cared about or needed my PC to keep running in case of drive failure) I'd probably do mirroring as well.

Incidentally, you can't read a disk you pull from a mirrored pool directly but you can rebuild the pool using a separate Windows PC - at least that is what I understand from here...

Storage Spaces Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - TechNet Articles - United States (English) - TechNet Wiki

 

Hi,

An excerpt from the link provided by lx07:

Nothing ever is but the setup as described in the quote above sure is a lot more resilient than just a basic disk.

Cheers, *Wink