Logo

Navigation

Building a Windows 8 Home Server: Storage and Storage Spaces

By | on Aug 2, 2012 | 20 Comments
How to Guides News Windows
panel
22 Flares Twitter 13 Facebook 7 Google+ 2 Email -- Email to a friend LinkedIn 0 22 Flares ×

[box type="info"]Building a Windows 8 Home Server – Step by Step eBook

Building a Windows 8 Home Server – Step by Step is We Got Served's essential guide to Microsoft's “re-imagined” Windows operating system… with a twist! Whether you're new to the world of home servers, thinking about upgrading from Windows Home Server or swapping your Network Attached Storage device for a real computer, this 360 page eBook will help you build, install and configure Windows 8 for home server use.

Buy Now from the WGS Store: £9.99

  1. Introduction
  2. Windows 8 Home Servers: Why and What?
  3. Home Server Hardware
  4. Building the Server
  5. Configuring Your UEFI Motherboard
  6. Installing Windows 8
  7. A Lap Around the Windows 8 Desktop. Erm, Desktops
  8. Storage and Storage Spaces [eBook Exclusive]
  9. Managing User Accounts and Family Safety
  10. Homegroups and Shared Folders
  11. File History, Backup and Data Recovery [eBook Exclusive]
  12. Windows 8 Media Streaming & Play To
  13. Remote Access, Remote Media Streaming and the SkyDrive Cloud [eBook Exclusive]
  14. Running Windows Home Server as a Virtual Machine in Windows 8 [eBook Exclusive]

[/box]

 

If you’ve previously used Windows Home Server, a Drobo storage device or similar products from the likes of Netgear or Synology then the feature that has most likely got you thinking about Windows 8 is Storage Spaces. Storage Spaces is Windows 8 (and Windows Server 2012’s) storage management feature.

I mentioned Windows Home Server, as the first release of that platform included a similar (in spirit, rather than technical architecture) feature called Drive Extender. This feature allowed the creation of a single pool of storage comprising multiple drives as well as the ability to automatically duplicate data across different physical drives for protection – so if one drive failed, your data was already duplicated on a second drive. Drobo, Netgear, Synology – indeed, most Network Attached Storage vendors – have similar types of technology on their systems, but to date, the Windows client operating system has lacked a robust, user friendly storage pooling feature.

Enter Storage Spaces.

I’m guessing that the Windows 8 development team had a good look at Windows Home Server Drive Extender (great though it was, it wasn’t the most robust from an architectural standpoint) and thought they could build something a little better – and that’s what they did.

The benefits for the user are obvious – firstly simple, automatic data protection across multiple physical drives. Secondly, take away the concerns of managing multiple disks – create a single pool of storage from any size or type of storage (internal or external) that users can add disks to whenever they wish, with Windows looking after the complexity on their behalf. That’s what computers are for, right?

Two pretty awesome benefits – and, since Microsoft did away with Drive Extender in Windows Home Server 2011 due to significant architectural issues, Storage Spaces brings back those much needed benefits to those managing systems with multiple drives. But, the Windows 8 developers didn’t stop there – they continued to build additional functionality into Storage Spaces that took the feature well beyond what Drive Extender could provide. Those additions include:

  • Greater flexibility in protection – where Drive Extender mirrored data from one hard drive to a second hard drive, Storage Spaces can create two distinct copies of your data across pools of three or more physical disks – a bit like RAID 5 (for the more technically minded). There’ll be a slight performance hit on transfer speeds when you do this, but on the flip side, you get the added protection.
  • Thin provisioning – to make life a little easier, you can create Storage Spaces that are actually bigger that the sum of physical storage you actually have. It takes a bit of work to get your head around, but for example, you can create a virtual storage space for your video files that is 50TB, (even if you only have 9TB across all your disks) and Windows will subsequently ask you to add more storage when it needs it, rather fire you a Disk Full message. This is a feature that’s used extensively in Enterprise, but may offer some convenience in the home too.

One final note to mention before we dive into Storage Spaces – whereas Microsoft tried to rip up the Windows file system rule book with Drive Extender with some pretty fancy (but ultimately flawed) technical architecture that allowed the removal of the concept of drive letters, Windows 8 Storage Spaces works within the rules, which ensures it’s more compatible with Windows applications and is better integrated with Windows itself. So, it shouldn’t corrupt your data, and break any apps (like Drive Extender had the risk of doing) – it should be around for the duration, and hurrah for that.

 

To read this chapter, buy the Building a Windows 8 Home Server – Step by Step eBook.

 

 

 

[box type="info"]Building a Windows 8 Home Server – Step by Step eBook

Building a Windows 8 Home Server – Step by Step is We Got Served's essential guide to Microsoft's “re-imagined” Windows operating system… with a twist! Whether you're new to the world of home servers, thinking about upgrading from Windows Home Server or swapping your Network Attached Storage device for a real computer, this 360 page eBook will help you build, install and configure Windows 8 for home server use.

Buy Now from the WGS Store: £9.99

  1. Introduction
  2. Windows 8 Home Servers: Why and What?
  3. Home Server Hardware
  4. Building the Server
  5. Configuring Your UEFI Motherboard
  6. Installing Windows 8
  7. A Lap Around the Windows 8 Desktop. Erm, Desktops
  8. Storage and Storage Spaces [eBook Exclusive]
  9. Managing User Accounts and Family Safety
  10. Homegroups and Shared Folders
  11. File History, Backup and Data Recovery [eBook Exclusive]
  12. Windows 8 Media Streaming & Play To
  13. Remote Access, Remote Media Streaming and the SkyDrive Cloud [eBook Exclusive]
  14. Running Windows Home Server as a Virtual Machine in Windows 8 [eBook Exclusive]

[/box]


Tags:

Recent Posts

Related Posts

Author Description

Terry Walsh is the founder of We Got Served. He started the community in February 2007 with a mission to help families everywhere figure out the technology needed to run the modern home. He lives in Silverstone, UK with his wife, Karen, two sons, Jamie and Elliot and Poppy the Cat. Born and raised in Liverpool, England, Terry has been awarded Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional Award each year since 2008 for his work on We Got Served.

  • pjakesson

    Good article. I am curios how you will, (if you do), implement client
    backups and remote (media) access.

  • bcor

    “Once a pool contains storage spaces, you can only add disks. You cannot
    remove drives from the pool. However, when a storage pool is empty, you
    can reconfigure which disks make up the pool.”

    Does this mean you cannot add a bigger disk to a pool, then mark a smaller one for removal ? Do you have to backup-delete_all_data-reconfigure-restore just to remove an old drive?

    That can’t be true… can it ?

    • http://www.bandwidthblog.com Minnaar Pieters

      Same question-what if one of the drives become unhealthy? Provided mirroring is on, is my only option to simply unplug that drive?

      • Chris J.

        The two screenshots on page 7 contradicts the text, they clearly state “remove” drives.

        • Regular Reader

          I may be wrong here but In the text it says you can remove a drive when the pool is empty. In one image it says rename drive (pool contains data) and in the other it says remove drive but in this picture the pool is empty so not sure how the images contradict the text? Agree it’s a bit stupid if the only way to remove a drive is to have redundancy and then pull out the one to be removed.

          • http://www.facebook.com/TonyXiang8787 Yu Xiang

            I agree. It’s ridiculous that you should backup-delete storage spaces-remove/add drive-recreate storage spaces-recovery data. The extensibility is too poor.

          • dan4307

            I agree. Ridiculous!!! In looking at the images in this article and on other sites it appears you can only rename a drive with data in the pool) and not remove it. If this is true (I hope it isn’t) this imo is a serious issue not only for those WHS folks, but also for the general public which Windows 8 is desgined to support. Yanking a drive out hoping “storage spaces” will properly reduplicate the data to a new or existing drive sounds very risky.
            Terry – I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on what this means. Maybe I’m overreacting and/or don’t understand.

      • BullDawg

        If the only way to remove a drive is to remove all data, then I guess I’ll be staying with WHS v1.

    • Jorn

      I’d also love to get some more information on this …

    • Drashna

      If you use the Server Manager (*only* available in the Server OS’s) you can remove any disk, any time.

      Though, if you physically remove the disk, or disable it in device manager (you can’t set it as offline, as it no longer shows up in disk management), you can remove it that way….

  • Hurco

    A nice read so far on the whole process and as A WHS V1 owner currently considering upgrading & trying to figure out the best route it is very interesting.

    I would also like to know some more info regarding bcor’s point below.

    How is the recovery aspect of the data managed?

    Coming from a WHS V1 setup which has had a boot drive failure and 1 of my 3 x 1Tb drives fail I am interested to know the ins and outs of the data recovery, as I was quite impressed with no data loss when my WHS had HDD issues.

  • http://twitter.com/amcowan Alexander Cowan

    I’m running Windows 8 consumer preview, and the speed of parity storage spaces was very slow, under 20MB/s to write data, I’m wondering what sort of performance you guys have been getting with the Release Preview. I’m also looking forward to solutions for backup, currently I’m just mirroring shares to a large esata raid5 box.

  • Clay Gradis

    Terry, excellent article, thanks, this is the info I’ve been waiting for you to get to.

  • Paul

    A long time WHSv1 user that loves that we have a variant of drive pooling with redundancy coming back, and seriously considering the move to using Win8 or 2012 essentials.
    I’m concerned about a couple of things. the suggestion we can’t remove a drive (like we could in WHSv1) sounds like it could be a show stopper or just something needs more research to find a procedure, as already said by others.. we would need to replace due to disk health, failure or simply for a better disk (size/speed/energy whatever), so would be intrested to find if there is a procedure that would work.
    I’ve also had to recover my WHS a couple of times from major failure and the ease of just plugging in a drive and finding my files is important to me. I wonder if the machine failed and I took one of the drives to another machine.. could I browse to the portion files that are on that actual drive to recover them? Can another win8 machine see the files, does even a win7 machine see the files.. (I’m not talking seeing the storage spaces, just seeing raw files somewhere on the disk).
    Maybe I need to do some testing myself :)

  • http://twitter.com/pr3sidentspence Michael Ellis

    I’ve run into a major problem with storage spaces. My storage space is full. Having a full storage space puts it into an error state, and it goes offline. You can click “Bring online” but it immediately goes offline again.
    So, I can’t free space on it, because I can’t get it online to delete stuff. And, more importantly, I can’t get anything off of it because it won’t stay online.
    It seems my only option is to add three drives, as I had it set to parity. The only problem? I don’t have three more drives to add.
    So, if your storage space goes offline because it is near capacity, DO NOT bring it online and attempt copy/save more files to it. You will be left in a state where your only option to get it to work again is to add one or more drives.

    • Drashna

      You should be able to just add one more drive.
      But still, understandable.

  • k1

    Thank you for the article. It’s a great explanation of “storage spaces”.
    Does anyone know; when using parity protection; is there any pre-set logic/order or definable parameters as to how/where files, folders and shares would reside across multiple drives?
    This would obviously be an issue for those of us storing large numbers of DVD and BD movies. If folder contents for a movie title are scattered across several drives, then multiple disks would need to spin up for that movie to play – often causing problems and consuming more power.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1222762667 Chris Ciccarello

    Terry, GREAT article. BUT, you are really doing a disservice to your readers by not addressing the obvious concerns in the comments here. If there’s no way to remove a (failing) drive from the storage pool without emptying and deleting and then rebuilding the entire pool, that is beyond stupid and virtually unusable. If you’re going to say what an awesome feature Storage Spaces is, you can’t ignore what appears to be a huge flaw with it. Thanks… being critical here, but do appreciate all the great info.

  • Zicoz

    “There’ll be a slight performance hit on transfer speeds when you do this, but on the flip side”

    Is this really true? If anything the performance should be better in a “raid-5″ pool shouldn’t it?

  • http://twitter.com/puddnhead2 David Wilson

    I hope you at least updated this chapter in the paid book. Frankly, looking at this chapter and the introduction, the excitement about Storage Spaces looks … foolish & dangerous, given what people have actually experienced int he real world. I get it you wrote all this months before Win8 shipped, and didn’t know any better. But that’s just the point, anyone buying this should be VERY aware that you wrote this before the final product was available, and you … well, like I said, you had no idea how (if) things would really work. I’m just not gonna pay money for a document I already know is blind to a huge problem.

Terry Walsh has 3584 followers

Hello reader

We Got Served is here to help you get excited and get going with new technology.

Whether you're an expert or a beginner, we've got news, reviews, tips, tricks, help and more for today's modern family in the connected home.

Activity

August 2012
M T W T F S S
« Jul   Sep »
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Our Latest eBook

© 2007-2013. All Rights Reserved. Written with love in the UK and USA. See you again soon.
22 Flares Twitter 13 Facebook 7 Google+ 2 Email -- Email to a friend LinkedIn 0 22 Flares ×