Storage Spaces and my experience

WildViper

Senior member
Feb 19, 2002
288
0
76
Sometime back I was on here asking for help on putting together a XBMC Media Server PC.

Well that was completed with 10TB of Data storage capability. I have 5 disks of various sizes in one Storage Spaces pool in Win 8.1 64bit.

This post is to let others know of my experience and can perhaps help someone. My way of contributing back.

I have been running this setup for the past 3 to 4 months. Doing lots of data transfer over gigabit network using Trendnet unmanaged switches. I usually averaged about 10 to 11MB/s. Not terribly fast and I am going to look at what the reason is. But that aside...all my data took days to transfer over. (On hindsight, I should have just removed the drives from my main pc and put it in the server and transferred that way. C'est la vie!)

Well, couple of days ago, one of my drives reported an error via SMART. So I am concerned about this drive and I order a new Toshiba 3TB to replace this Seagate (of course!) 1TB.

I am running on a Parity basis in Storage Spaces FYI.

I was very concerned on how I was going to replace this failing drive and not loose my data. I read online everywhere...watched youtube videos...and there just doesn't seem to be a straight answer.

Some folks say we have to run PowerShell commands and so on. I didn't want to do that if I could help it. There had to be a way that this was easy. When you google, you get some folks saying just click on the "Remove" command next to the drive and voila! Not so easy...Remove command doesn't appear just like that.

The secret I have found out is that you have to physically disconnect the drive and reboot.
To my surprise, I was able to access my files and even play couple of movies I have stored. No issues.

However, when you go into Storage Spaces, it will show the warning and also have the "Remove" button. But..before you go click happy in removing....I have read that it is wiser to add a new drive first. So I added the Toshiba 3TB and it showed 0% usage. My failing 1TB drive was 34% full. I pressed the "Remove" button and Voila!....Storage Spaces removed that drive and is self-repairing. My Toshiba drive is getting more data and is filling up. While in repair mode, I was still able to play my movies. And didn't have to use PowerShell at all.

Note though...I had full back of this before I did this...just in case. Now I know..I won't need full back up in future. The system works!

I am currently at 38% repaired.
 

smitbret

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2006
3,389
23
81
Sometime back I was on here asking for help on putting together a XBMC Media Server PC.

Well that was completed with 10TB of Data storage capability. I have 5 disks of various sizes in one Storage Spaces pool in Win 8.1 64bit.

This post is to let others know of my experience and can perhaps help someone. My way of contributing back.

I have been running this setup for the past 3 to 4 months. Doing lots of data transfer over gigabit network using Trendnet unmanaged switches. I usually averaged about 10 to 11MB/s. Not terribly fast and I am going to look at what the reason is. But that aside...all my data took days to transfer over. (On hindsight, I should have just removed the drives from my main pc and put it in the server and transferred that way. C'est la vie!)

Well, couple of days ago, one of my drives reported an error via SMART. So I am concerned about this drive and I order a new Toshiba 3TB to replace this Seagate (of course!) 1TB.

I am running on a Parity basis in Storage Spaces FYI.

I was very concerned on how I was going to replace this failing drive and not loose my data. I read online everywhere...watched youtube videos...and there just doesn't seem to be a straight answer.

Some folks say we have to run PowerShell commands and so on. I didn't want to do that if I could help it. There had to be a way that this was easy. When you google, you get some folks saying just click on the "Remove" command next to the drive and voila! Not so easy...Remove command doesn't appear just like that.

The secret I have found out is that you have to physically disconnect the drive and reboot.
To my surprise, I was able to access my files and even play couple of movies I have stored. No issues.

However, when you go into Storage Spaces, it will show the warning and also have the "Remove" button. But..before you go click happy in removing....I have read that it is wiser to add a new drive first. So I added the Toshiba 3TB and it showed 0% usage. My failing 1TB drive was 34% full. I pressed the "Remove" button and Voila!....Storage Spaces removed that drive and is self-repairing. My Toshiba drive is getting more data and is filling up. While in repair mode, I was still able to play my movies. And didn't have to use PowerShell at all.

Note though...I had full back of this before I did this...just in case. Now I know..I won't need full back up in future. The system works!

I am currently at 38% repaired.

Don't dump your backups. RAID is not a backup.

You are basically running a RAID 5 with storage spaces. That means you can lose 1 Drive and still be able to recover without data loss. However, you are currently rebuilding your array where the info from the parity drive fills in the missing data on the new drive that replaced the one that crashed. The problem is that rebuilds are very hard on HDDs and the likelihood that another drive fails during the rebuild is very high. If that happens, your array is shot and you are out the data that was on both of the drives that crashed. You'll be glad you had the backup at that point.
 

WildViper

Senior member
Feb 19, 2002
288
0
76
Yeah I understand that....but boy...it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I have had other drives fail before and it is a pain copying the data over to a new drive and all that goes into it. This one comparatively was easy!

I do have full backup on another drive in my NAS.
 

smitbret

Diamond Member
Jul 27, 2006
3,389
23
81
Yeah I understand that....but boy...it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I have had other drives fail before and it is a pain copying the data over to a new drive and all that goes into it. This one comparatively was easy!

I do have full backup on another drive in my NAS.

Yeah, RAID is nice when it's working right and most of the time it is. The problem with RAID is that when it goes wrong it can be REALLY wrong.

Horror stories abound with people that though their RAID 1 was a great backup but it wasn't. Didn't want that to happen to you.