Anyone using 'Storage Spaces' in Windows 8 ??

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sequoia464

Senior member
Feb 12, 2003
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I just stumbled on this yesterday and tested it out with a couple sets of SSD's that I don't use any longer.

Seems like a viable alternative to raid as you get, at least it appears so to me, most of the benefits of raid but it seems that you can still run optimize (trim) on the sets. I built the two sets, one as a 'simple' set (similar to raid 0) and one as a '2 way mirror' (similar to raid1) - I was able to run optimize on both sets, but I'm not sure if it really has an affect.

Couple of articles on it
here .. http://www.anandtech.com/show/5307/windows-8s-storage-spaces-detailed
and here..http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/...rage-for-scale-resiliency-and-efficiency.aspx

Like I said, I just yesterday found this feature, wondering if anyone has any insight in to how well it works and if trim commands are indeed passed through.
 
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kmmatney

Diamond Member
Jun 19, 2000
4,363
1
81
One problem with storage spaces is that it doesn't look like you can boot from it (I may be wrong, but I thought I remembered that). If it could I would consider using it to mirror my OS on my work laptop.

I have 3 SSDs in my laptop - 2 x 256GB Samsung 830s, and a 32GB Samsung mSATA. I still just find it easier to partition the drives the normal way: OS, Development (take up the whole first SSD), and Work/Storage (the entire second SSD). I used the small 32GB mSATA for backup of critical work. I have a windows Home server to backup all my drives every night (when I'm not traveling).

I almost upgraded my Daughter's computer to Windows 8 just for Storage Spaces. She was out of room on here 40GB SSD, and I could buy another SSD and extend her drive C. However I just enabled drive compression in Windows 7, and she gained 12GB back. If she runs out of room again, it will be cheaper to buy a larger SSD than upgrade to Windows 8. BTW - there was no performance degradation I could notice when compressing the SSD, so that's an easy way to gain a lot of space.

I wish I had Storage Spaces in my WHS server, though. It's a shame they didn't have it, as it's really the best way to use this feature - in a server. For now, I'm just using the built-in Windows RAID, and putting different server folders on different partitions. That works well enough.

So I can't really answer your question - I've been aware of this feature, and was excited about it, but just haven't figured out how to make use of it. The only place I would use it would be my home server, and that doesn't have storage spaces.

My home system in running an SSD for OS (and a few games) and then a regular hard drive, so if I ever run out of space, I would just add a new drive and use sotrage spaces. However, I keep large files on the server, so i won;'t run out of space anytime soon.
 
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sequoia464

Senior member
Feb 12, 2003
870
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71
You are correct in that you can't boot from storage spaces.

I'm thinking that this setup might work well for me, I currently have W8 on a 256 GB SSD and I have 4 128 GB drives that are being used in my W7 setup that I would like to use in the W8 build as soon as I get all of my programs migrated over.

Be nice to get some more input on it. Looks like I'll have to do some research.
 
zephyrprime

zephyrprime

Diamond Member
Feb 18, 2001
7,512
2
81
I'm going to set it up on my media server. I already tried to make a test storage pool out of usb flash drives but it wouldn't let me use removable drives to make my pool :(
 
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Mushkins

Golden Member
Feb 11, 2013
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zephyrprime said:
I'm going to set it up on my media server. I already tried to make a test storage pool out of usb flash drives but it wouldn't let me use removable drives to make my pool :(
Click to expand...

Makes sense, just removing one all willy-nilly would totally FUBAR your pool. Storage Spaces is not the same as a hot-swappable hardware raid array :)

It works well enough as a software solution. Just being able to adjust and reallocate the sizes, settings, and partitions without totally fudging the pool is a big step up from Server 2003! I'm not sure how well it handles drive failures and bitrot though, I guess only time will tell since it's such a new product in the consumer space.
 
Kneedragger

Kneedragger

Golden Member
Feb 18, 2013
1,187
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I setup a storage pool a couple weeks ago and it was pretty easy. So far I haven't seen or noticed any issues.
 
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