Windows 10: 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

:)

 

How robust is two-way mirrored storage spaces in Windows? Are there any common gotchas?

This configuration seems to be just as robust as a RAID configuration in terms of data redundancy, hot swapping, expanding, etc. functionality wise.

If you leverage the ReFS file system type with your storage spaces, then you further increase the resiliency of your data written on the disks.

The storage pool manages the group of disks in an array and is smart enough to figure out how to distribute data written to the disks (including mirror copies) to ensure optimal usage.

Filling up any disk partition to full capacity is never a good thing since once it is filled and a new write operation comes in then you will start having problems.

You will still need to manage and monitor the disk usage, and routinely to take proactive measures such as adding a disk to the pool with expand operations, etc.

Start testing the functionality now while it's not urgent to confirm and document the procedure in detail so you have a good understanding but it should be "simple" for you just like you say it seems.

Test Disk Operations

While you can, and before you start putting critical data on the storage space, do some testing and confirm that it works as simple as it is supposed to. This should be simple to test and document the process so you know what to do later down the road once time has passed and it's time to replace a failed drive, etc. when it's a little more critical—you can thank yourself then for doing this now.

I would have a couple hot spare drives on site with the two-way mirror configuration since if one dies, time is critical to get a new one added and rebuilt to ensure continued data redundancy.

Data Backups - Common Misconception

It is important to understand that data redundancy should not be used as a data backup solution and that backing up data on systems with redundant drives is still a best practice. This is especially even more important if your data is critical to you and/or your business.

Further Resources

• Storage Spaces in Windows 10 - Step Details
  
• How to Use Windows 10’s Storage Spaces to Mirror and Combine Drives
  
• Does ReFS replace NTFS? When should I use it?
  
• Windows Storage Spaces and ReFS: Is it time to ditch RAID for good?
  

 

Two Way mirror storage space - break the space without loosing data?

Okay so i was bounced around by telephone support this morning for over an hour and i figure the community will give me better answers so here is the scenario:

I have a win 10 machine acting as a server (it is a server but MS accounts for onedrive doesnt work on server '12 so i have to use win 10, don't ask its irrelevant)

on this windows 10 box i have a few storage spaces, all two way mirror (25 tb logical, 50 TB actual). so what i want to do here is break one of the 4tb pools and use the drive i remove to copy the data off to; then remove the storage space entirely. since
its a two way mirror, i've been able to take the drive off and the data integrity remains in place, it just warns me that a drive has failed and to replace it. So on to my issue:

When i remove the drive, i then have a 4tb drive that i want to copy the the storage space data to. every time i remove the drive and plug it back in, windows does what it should and reconnects it to the storage space. i think its because the disc is dynamic
to be used in the storage space and my question really is A) can i just change it back to a regular disk then copy my data off - removing the storage space completely or B) will that cause all my data to be deleted before i can back it up?

 

Disband Two-Way Mirror Storage Pool

I am attempting to split a two-way mirror storage space. There are two physical disks in the storage space. The idea is to keep the contents of the storage space, while going back to NTFS. I do not have the additional disk capacity to copy over the contents of the storage somewhere else while I remove the storage space entirely.

Thus, I retired one of the two disks and attempted to format the retired disk. Unfortunately, when the disk is retired, it is still part of the storage space. I then attempted to repair the storage space, but it will complain there is not enough space and demands a HDD replacement to keep the two-way mirror intact. Since Windows does not seem to let me touch the HDD that's still in the storage space, I'm completely stuck at this point.

How can I force the HDD out of the storage space to format it as NTFS and copy the files over from the storage space? Or is there another way to accomplish my goal?