Windows 10: Storage Spaces Parity Repair?

Hi: I'm a newbie here... using an OWC Thunderbay 6 DAS with Thunderbolt 3 for video/photo files using (Win 10 Home) Storage Spaces for the past 6 weeks without problems. Using Parity option in Storage Spaces to emulate RAID 5 protection.

Today, got Parity Error in Manage Storage Spaces, though all 6 drives show "OK". Both Hard Disk Sentinel and CrystaDiskInfo also show normal drives. No pertinent drive events in Event Viewer.

From reading other posts from folks with Storage Spaces issues, I'm inclined to "repair" this parity error if possible, and then consider migrating to DrivePool to avoid repetition or other future issues with SS. Can anyone walk me through how to do a parity repair?

If not doable, then can someone detail a step-by-step process for migrating my 24Tb currently on Storage Spaces to Drivepool? Many thanks!

:)

 

Storages Spaces Configuration

I think I found the solution. It seems that there is a BUG in Storage Spaces. If you select Parity you cannot use the ReFS file system. The setup incorrectly allows you to select the ReFS file system after selecting Parity and then bombs out with the error
reported in my last post.

Through this process of starting down the Storage Spaces function two big road blocks for me were:

• The use of a RAID card. It seems that you cannot have any implementation, e.g. software or hardware, of RAID on the system if you want to use Storage Spaces on that system.
• If you want to use Parity you cannot use the ReFS file system.

Hopefully MS will fix the above issues.

 

Storage spaces, parity, and adding an additional drive

I have been running storage spaces on my Win10 computer for quite some time now (and am happy with it, even when I lost a drive it recovered nicely). It worked without being annoyingly overcomplicated, and I really just needed slow, safe
space.
My setup: 3x hard drives, the smallest being 3tb. I set this up as a parity, default settings. This was all going great until I started running out of space, and decided why upgrade hard drives, when I could just add hard drives? My 3tb drives are perfectly
usable, no need to trash them just because I'm out of space.

So, I plugged in an 8tb drive (knowing I would only get 3tb usable, because that's the size of my smallest drive), and went through the GUI to "Add drive".

Bam. drive added. I now have 3x data spanning 4 drives, instead of 2x data spanning 3 drives!

Wrong.

Apparently "just works" does not apply to adding a new drive to a parity space. "Columns" are apparently unchangeable. If I have 3x disks, I have 2x data 1x parity worth of storage. If I add a 4th disk, this does not change! Or, maybe I have 2x data and all
4 disks have parity data scattered around, for a minimum of 1x parity still. Either way, my 6TB pool (3x 3tb disks - 1disk for parity) does NOT grow when I add a new disk. Vastly inconvenient.

(If someone knows a way to add a column to this without starting over from scratch, that would be awesome).
So, I thought to myself:

I have a pool of 4 disks. I have a small bit of extra space. Why not make a second storage space that spans the same 4 disks? So one pool, I now have 1 parity space of 4 disks/3 columns, and 1 parity space of 4 disks, 4 columns.

I can gradually cut/paste my data from my 3col space to my 4col space, and grow my 4col as space clears up on my 3col.

Screenshot of the 2 "spaces" and the command I used to create the 4column virtual disk:

StorageSpaces.jpg
BUT: it is saying "low on space, add 3 disks". If this is a 4 column space, and I built it on 4 disks, shouldn't it be asking for 4 disks?

Did I do this all wrong?

Do I need to buy another hard drive, move all my crap to it, and just nuke this entire pool? I really don't want to do that, because I am afraid of having all my data on a single disk during the transition. A single, NEW disk.
Is my "create a second storage space and migrate data over" I was attempting a valid approach? Dangerous and cheap?

 

Windows 10 Storage Spaces Improvements?

Are you using 3 column parity? This is the default setting for parity spaces in the Windows 8.1 GUI. If so, this is the reason for your high overhead. 3 column single-parity incurrs a 50% storage overhead (1 parity shard for every 2 data shards)

This makes sense for small pools containing 3 or 4 physical disks. However it is a poor choice with 14 physical disks.

In your case I suggest a 12 column dual-parity space. This means 2 parity shards for every 10 data shards. This will allow for recovery from two drive failures and give only a 20% storage overhead.

Unfortunately the Windows 8.1 GUI is too basic to allow creation of such a space. You need to use Powershell. You can create such a space on your existing storage pool and move data to it from your existing parity space. As you move the data your free space
will increase.