Windows 10: WSL Storage Physical Location

My WSL storage says that it can store 1TB, but my PC has only around 200GB remaining on disk D, and 40GB remaining on disk C. Where is that physically stored, and how can I move files from Windows to WSL?

:)

 

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 0.68.2 released

Source: Release 0.68.2 . microsoft/WSL . GitHub

See also:

• Enable or Disable Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL in Windows 10
• How to Update from WSL to WSL 2 in Windows 10

 

Windows Storage Spaces -- Moving a Physical Disk

Hope the following review/summary of my recent experimenting with Microsoft Storage Spaces will be of use to others. Sorry if this is too 'verbose'... The steps I performed/show could be used in one of several scenarios...

1] If you physically remove a disk from a functioning Storage Space without going thru Storage Spaces in the Control Panel first. 'How to Remove Drive from Storage Pool for Storage Spaces in Windows 10'

2] If there is a failure of a disk in a Storage Space [two-way mirror]

3] If there is a failure of the computer hosting the Storage Space [again a two-way mirror].

In scenario 2 you can replace the failed disk and press-on. But if you want/need to get the files off the remaining 'good' disk or in the case of scenario 3 you have no other option, you can physically remove the disk from the computer and connect to another. In my case, moving a 2.5" SSD [Identified in the Desktop Pool as 'SamsungSSD2'] from a Windows 10 Home Desktop to a Windows 10 Home Laptop and connecting with USB 3.0 to 2.5” SATA III Hard Drive Adapter/Cable.

When connecting the 2.5" SSD to the laptop got a Notification 'Check Storage Spaces for issues'





Windows displayed 'Microsoft Storage Space Device' in both Device Manager, Disk Manager and Explorer...

















All of the files stored on SSD2 were accessible thru Explorer. So at this point we can copy any/all the files from the Desktop's two-way mirror.

I can't speak to what would happen or the steps needed if you wanted to physically return the drive to the Desktop's original two-way mirror. The most straightforward option would be to build a new mirror on the Desktop from scratch and go from there.

At this point on the laptop, Windows treats the drive as a Storage Space [albeit in a 'Reduced resiliency' state]. The following steps will guide you thru how to get the SSD 'out' of Microsoft's Storage Space.

On the laptop, under Control Panel; Storage Spaces we are presented details about the Storage Pool as created on the Desktop, to include name of the Storage Space and the details about the Physical drives making up the original Two-way mirror. It happily finds SSD2, but SSD1 is missing. Hence the 'Warning' about 'Reduced resiliency...'. These details must be coming from somewhere on SSD2. I was not successful in finding out much about how/what is on a Storage Spaces Two-way mirror other than info on this Microsoft Blog in 2012

From here I selected 'Change Settings'; From there chose to 'Delete' the Two-way mirror Storage Space













This deletes the Two-way mirror Storage Space, but we still end up with the two drives in the Pool. A simple matter to 'Delete Pool'









And we end up here in the Control Panel...





SSD2 now appears in Disk Management and Windows Explorer









Of note... There were NO files from the Desktop Two-way mirror on SSD2 once we got to this point in the process!

Please, add/correct as needed since this was done in a bit of a rush.

 

Systemd support is now available in WSL

Many popular distributions run systemd by default, such as Ubuntu, Debian and more. This change means that WSL will be even more similar to using your favorite Linux distros on a bare metal machine, and will let you use software that depends on systemd support.

A few examples of Linux applications that depend on systemd are:

• snap
  • A handy binary that allows you to install and manage software inside Ubuntu.
  • Try running: snap install spotify or snap install postman
• microk8s
  • Get Kubernetes running locally on your system quickly.
  • Try the getting started tutorial
• systemctl
  • A tool that’s part of systemd, interact with services on your Linux machine
  • Try systemctl list-units --type=service to see which services are available and their status

How is this change possible in WSL?

Supporting systemd required changes to the WSL architecture. As systemd requires PID 1, the WSL init process started within the Linux distribution becomes a child process of the systemd. Because the WSL init process is responsible for providing the infrastructure for communication between the Linux and Windows components, changing this hierarchy required rethinking some of the assumptions made with the WSL init process. Additional modifications had to be made to ensure a clean shutdown (as that shutdown is controlled by systemd now) and to have compatibility with WSLg, It is also important to note that with these change, systemd services will NOT keep your WSL instance alive. Your WSL instance will stay alive in the same way it did before, which you can read more about here.

Given that this changes how WSL behaves when booting up, we wanted to be careful about applying this to user’s already existing WSL distros. So currently you need to opt-in to enable systemd for a specific WSL distro, and we will monitor feedback and investigate making this behavior by default in the future.

How can you get systemd on your machine?

To get started, you will need to do these two things: – Ensure you are running the right version of WSL: Version 0.67.6 and above – Set the systemd flag set in your WSL distro settings

Ensuring you are on the right WSL version

This change is only available in the Microsoft Store version of WSL version 0.67.6 and higher. You can check your version number by running wsl --version. If that command fails then you are running the in-Windows version of WSL and need to upgrade to the Store version.

This version of WSL is now available in the Microsoft Store to users on Windows Insiders build for initial testing, and then after a few weeks we will make it available to all users to ensure quality. You can run wsl --update to check for any WSL updates.

If you are not on Windows Insiders and want to use it immediately, you can download the latest release from the WSL release page.

Set the systemd flag set in your WSL distro settings

You will need to edit the wsl.conf file to ensure systemd starts up on boot.

Add these lines to the /etc/wsl.conf (note you will need to run your editor with sudo privileges, e.g: sudo nano /etc/wsl.conf):

Code:

And close out of the nano editor using CTRL+O to save and CTRL+X to exit.

Final steps

With the above steps done, close your WSL distro Windows and run wsl.exe --shutdown from PowerShell to restart your WSL instances. Upon launch you should have systemd running. You can check this with the command systemctl list-unit-files --type=service which should show your services’ status.

Acknowledgements and Feedback!

Thank you to the Canonical team for working with us to deliver this feature! Check out Canonical’s blog post here. For any technical issues please file them on the Microsoft/WSL Github repo. You can follow up with WSL team members, or with me on Twitter. Lastly, learn more about WSL, including how to set up common development tools like Git, VS Code, Docker containers, databases, GPU acceleration for machine learning, and more, by visiting the WSL documentation.
Source: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/comma...ilable-in-wsl/

Microsoft Store: https://www.elevenforum.com/t/instal...indows-11.377/