What Is Windows Storage Spaces: Features & How to Create [Help]

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What Is Storage Spaces

Storage spaces are virtual drives that appear in File Explorer and can be used like any other drive. It allows users to organize multiple physical disks into Storage Pools, which can be easily expanded by simply adding disks. These disks can be connected either through USB, SATA, or SAS.

A storage pool can be composed of heterogeneous physical disks – different sized physical disks are accessible via different storage interconnects. It brings the safety of RAID to the desktop, creates an expanding space to store files, and provides these features at lower cost than other hardware options. 

How to Create Storage Spaces

Here, we take creating Storage Spaces in Windows 8 for example. 

Step 1: Open "Control Panel" to get the following interface. Then, choose "System and Security" to continue. 

system and security

Step 2: Select "Storage Spaces". 

storage spaces

Step 3: Choose "Create a new pool and storage space". 

create

Step 4: Select drives to create a storage pool and then click on "Create pool".

select drives

Step 5: Here, make settings for this storage space and click on "Create storage space". 

create storage space

Kind Remind:

There are 4 resiliency types to choose:

  1. Simple (no resiliency): designed to increase performance and doesn't protect files from drive failure by keeping multiple copies. Require one drive at least.
  2. Two-way mirror: make two copies of files and can tolerate one drive failure. Require 2 drives at least.
  3. Three-way mirror: tolerate two drive failures and requires 5 drives at least.
  4. Parity: designed for storage efficiency and protect files from drive failure by keeping more than one copy. It requires at least three drives to protect users from a single drive failure and at least seven drives from two drive failures.

After these operations we can see the newly created storage space in "Computer" as follows: 

view it in pc

How to Manage Storage Space with MiniTool Partition Wizard

Launch the free partitioning tool and we can see its main interface below: 

manage it in pw

In this interface as long as we select the storage space namely partition H, all performable functions will appear on the left action panel, including Format Partition, Move/Resize Partition, Merge Partition, Split Partition, Copy Partition, Change Cluster Size, and more. With these functions users can well manage storage spaces. 

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