Storage Spaces

streetwolf

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Storage Spaces are a very intriguing part of W8. I'd like to give them a try. From what I've read if I try to use Storage Spaces on drives with files the files will be deleted. Is this correct?

If I move my files to another drive that's won't be part of my pool, can I then move them back to my new pools and have them on a drive with the same drive letter so the programs that use them can access them?

I would probably be using my F and G drives to use Storage Space. I assume I can give the pools the same drive letters then move the corresponding files over to them and my programs will be none the wiser that they are part of a Storage Pool?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro X64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Homemade Rig
    CPU
    Intel Core i7 Quad 3770K @ 5 Ghz
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe
    Memory
    Corsair Dominator-GT 16GB @ 2400 Mhz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Sapphire HD7970 3GB OC Edition
    Sound Card
    Realtek HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    ASUS PA246Q & PA249Q IPS 24" LCD
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1200
    Hard Drives
    Samsung SSD 830, 840 256GB |
    2TB Seagate SATA3 |
    Hitachi eSata 500GB
    PSU
    Corsair Professional Series 1050W
    Case
    Corsair Obsididan 800D Full Tower
    Cooling
    Corsair H100 Liquid CPU Cooler
    Keyboard
    Logitech Wireless K520
    Mouse
    Microsoft Wireless Explorer
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    Browser
    Fx41
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    UEFI BIOS with a GPT SSD boot drive.
Storage Space is quite interesting and I've spent a fair amount of time playing with it. And in the event that your host computer dies, you can simply pull out the drives, move them to another Windows 8 host and the system reads the storage spaces metadata baked into them and reassembles on the next computer without you having to do anything.

Yes, when you setup drives in your pool, it's going to format them at the start..so files would be wiped out. Copy them elsewhere and then copy them back.

Correct, you can assign and change the drive letters associated with your pools. And the programs are none the wiser as to which type of storage they are on.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Self-Built in July 2009
    CPU
    Intel Q9550 2.83Ghz OC'd to 3.40Ghz
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev. 1.1, F12 BIOS
    Memory
    8GB G.Skill PI DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12 timings
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA 1280MB Nvidia GeForce GTX570
    Sound Card
    Realtek ALC899A 8 channel onboard audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    23" Acer x233H
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2 SSD
    Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black, 32MB cache. WD1001FALS
    PSU
    Corsair 620HX modular
    Case
    Antec P182
    Cooling
    stock
    Keyboard
    ABS M1 Mechanical
    Mouse
    Logitech G9 Laser Mouse
    Internet Speed
    15/2 cable modem
    Other Info
    Windows and Linux enthusiast. Logitech G35 Headset.
I use O&O Disk Image 6 Pro to do my disk images. Unfortunately O&O told me they don't support Storage Spaces but are working on it. My biggest concern with Storage Spaces is, can they be accessed from a bootable CD or USB drive to do drive restores? DI6 uses what looks like a W7 PE environment which obviously knows nothing about Storage Space.

I would imaging that even under *nix, Storage Spaces can't be accessed as they are under W8. Not being able to manipulate my disks with DI6 with it's PE bootable disk is a huge factor for me not using them.

Any thoughts on this?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro X64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Homemade Rig
    CPU
    Intel Core i7 Quad 3770K @ 5 Ghz
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe
    Memory
    Corsair Dominator-GT 16GB @ 2400 Mhz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Sapphire HD7970 3GB OC Edition
    Sound Card
    Realtek HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    ASUS PA246Q & PA249Q IPS 24" LCD
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1200
    Hard Drives
    Samsung SSD 830, 840 256GB |
    2TB Seagate SATA3 |
    Hitachi eSata 500GB
    PSU
    Corsair Professional Series 1050W
    Case
    Corsair Obsididan 800D Full Tower
    Cooling
    Corsair H100 Liquid CPU Cooler
    Keyboard
    Logitech Wireless K520
    Mouse
    Microsoft Wireless Explorer
    Internet Speed
    120/35
    Browser
    Fx41
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    UEFI BIOS with a GPT SSD boot drive.
I wouldn't count on any imaging utility right now to work with Storage Spaces. I only image my System drives...not my data drives. these are backed up separately via robocopy jobs with the /MIR switch to external offsite devices for me.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Self-Built in July 2009
    CPU
    Intel Q9550 2.83Ghz OC'd to 3.40Ghz
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev. 1.1, F12 BIOS
    Memory
    8GB G.Skill PI DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12 timings
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA 1280MB Nvidia GeForce GTX570
    Sound Card
    Realtek ALC899A 8 channel onboard audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    23" Acer x233H
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2 SSD
    Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black, 32MB cache. WD1001FALS
    PSU
    Corsair 620HX modular
    Case
    Antec P182
    Cooling
    stock
    Keyboard
    ABS M1 Mechanical
    Mouse
    Logitech G9 Laser Mouse
    Internet Speed
    15/2 cable modem
    Other Info
    Windows and Linux enthusiast. Logitech G35 Headset.
I store my disk images on a drive that I thought I would use as Storage Space until I thought about it. Not a good idea to use Storage Space on a drive with your images?

Have you ever looked at you drives under a non Windows 8 OS? I'm curious as to how they would show up?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro X64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Homemade Rig
    CPU
    Intel Core i7 Quad 3770K @ 5 Ghz
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe
    Memory
    Corsair Dominator-GT 16GB @ 2400 Mhz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Sapphire HD7970 3GB OC Edition
    Sound Card
    Realtek HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    ASUS PA246Q & PA249Q IPS 24" LCD
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1200
    Hard Drives
    Samsung SSD 830, 840 256GB |
    2TB Seagate SATA3 |
    Hitachi eSata 500GB
    PSU
    Corsair Professional Series 1050W
    Case
    Corsair Obsididan 800D Full Tower
    Cooling
    Corsair H100 Liquid CPU Cooler
    Keyboard
    Logitech Wireless K520
    Mouse
    Microsoft Wireless Explorer
    Internet Speed
    120/35
    Browser
    Fx41
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    UEFI BIOS with a GPT SSD boot drive.
Have you ever looked at you drives under a non Windows 8 OS? I'm curious as to how they would show up?
No, but I want to.

My storage spaces box is a VM with 3 extra hard drives in a storage array. I'll copy them over to a windows 7 host and see what happens. I'll report back my findings.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Self-Built in July 2009
    CPU
    Intel Q9550 2.83Ghz OC'd to 3.40Ghz
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev. 1.1, F12 BIOS
    Memory
    8GB G.Skill PI DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12 timings
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA 1280MB Nvidia GeForce GTX570
    Sound Card
    Realtek ALC899A 8 channel onboard audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    23" Acer x233H
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2 SSD
    Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black, 32MB cache. WD1001FALS
    PSU
    Corsair 620HX modular
    Case
    Antec P182
    Cooling
    stock
    Keyboard
    ABS M1 Mechanical
    Mouse
    Logitech G9 Laser Mouse
    Internet Speed
    15/2 cable modem
    Other Info
    Windows and Linux enthusiast. Logitech G35 Headset.
I took 2 drives and created Storage spaces on it. I made 1 storage space that was a 2GB Mirror, and I made 1 storage space that was a 2GB stripe. I copied some large files to each volume.

I then attached those 2 physical disks to a Windows 7 machine. Disk Management tool a long time to come up and it just showed me the 2 physical disks. It sees them as having partitions, but I have no options other than to DELETE the volumes or convert them to dynamic disks. I in no way have access to any of the data on either of the 2 storage spaces.

When I attach these same disks to a Windows 8 VM, they work just as they used to.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Self-Built in July 2009
    CPU
    Intel Q9550 2.83Ghz OC'd to 3.40Ghz
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev. 1.1, F12 BIOS
    Memory
    8GB G.Skill PI DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12 timings
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA 1280MB Nvidia GeForce GTX570
    Sound Card
    Realtek ALC899A 8 channel onboard audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    23" Acer x233H
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2 SSD
    Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black, 32MB cache. WD1001FALS
    PSU
    Corsair 620HX modular
    Case
    Antec P182
    Cooling
    stock
    Keyboard
    ABS M1 Mechanical
    Mouse
    Logitech G9 Laser Mouse
    Internet Speed
    15/2 cable modem
    Other Info
    Windows and Linux enthusiast. Logitech G35 Headset.
Very informative. Seems those programs that come with bootable media to to work standalone will need updating to support Storage Spaces. Seeing how long it took them to handle RAID I wouldn't expect to see anything soon.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro X64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Homemade Rig
    CPU
    Intel Core i7 Quad 3770K @ 5 Ghz
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe
    Memory
    Corsair Dominator-GT 16GB @ 2400 Mhz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Sapphire HD7970 3GB OC Edition
    Sound Card
    Realtek HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    ASUS PA246Q & PA249Q IPS 24" LCD
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1200
    Hard Drives
    Samsung SSD 830, 840 256GB |
    2TB Seagate SATA3 |
    Hitachi eSata 500GB
    PSU
    Corsair Professional Series 1050W
    Case
    Corsair Obsididan 800D Full Tower
    Cooling
    Corsair H100 Liquid CPU Cooler
    Keyboard
    Logitech Wireless K520
    Mouse
    Microsoft Wireless Explorer
    Internet Speed
    120/35
    Browser
    Fx41
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    UEFI BIOS with a GPT SSD boot drive.
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