How To Set Up Multiple Hard Drives Windows 10

I have congenital up a rather big drove of movies and Goggle box shows that I've ripped from Blu-ray discs. Every few years, I discover I need a bigger hard drive to concur them all, and with the introduction of 4K Blu-ray, even my multi-terabyte bulldoze is bursting at the seams. If only there was a better fashion to organize and consolidate all these files. Enter Windows' Storage Spaces.

How Storage Spaces Piece of work

The Storage Spaces feature aims to help with situations similar mine: instead of spreading your files across multiple drives in a disorganized way, you tin combine multiple hard drives into a puddle that Windows sees as one unified volume—with one drive letter.

Storage Spaces also allow you to add together back-up: if one drive fails, you tin can pop in a new one and rebuild your storage space without losing any data. (This is similar to a fill-in, but information technology'southward not the same, and you lot should still accept a remote, versioned backup in improver to redundancy if your data is truly of import.)

If you've heard of RAID, Storage Spaces is similar, only information technology's performed entirely in software—no demand for an extra hardware RAID bill of fare. The operation of your storage space won't be as fast as information technology would be with a RAID card, merely it'south significantly cheaper and easier to implement when you're just getting started with these types of pooling technologies.

How to Create a Storage Infinite

To create a storage space in Windows, open the Start card, blazon "storage spaces," and cull the Manage Storage Spaces tool. Later on opening the Control Console, click Create a New Pool and Storage Space and Windows volition present y'all with a list of drives attached to your computer.

They won't have their drive letters listed, so click the View Files button to brand extra sure yous're selecting the disks you want. Whatsoever drive you utilise with Storage Spaces will be erased, so you lot definitely don't want to choose the wrong ane!

Create a storage pool

When you're ready, click Create Pool. If y'all run into any errors, you may need to close programs, or even make clean the deejay from the command line before continuing.

You have a few options when setting upwards a new pool. A Simple puddle will combine the drives into one storage volume, with no redundancy. I mostly don't recommend this method unless you accept a robust backup system in place—in a simple pool, one failed bulldoze will mean losing all your data in the puddle.

Two-Way Mirror and Three-Manner Mirror require more drives for the aforementioned amount of usable space. A 2-way mirror requires at to the lowest degree two drives, and a 3-fashion mirror requires five.

However, they also introduce redundancy: your data is stored on multiple drives at a time, so if i drive fails, your information is nevertheless intact, and you lot tin pop a new drive in without skipping a beat. (In the case of Three-Mode Mirror, y'all tin can lose two drives at in one case without losing any data.)

Create a storage infinite

Parity is sort of a compromise betwixt the higher up options. You get more than usable space than yous would from the same number of mirrored drives, only yous all the same get redundancy thanks to parity $.25—tiny pieces of information that assistance rebuild information if ane drive goes dead.

(Parity is a somewhat complex concept, simply this video is a pretty decent beginner explanation of how it works, if you're interested.) The downside is that parity is much slower, then it isn't ideal for information you actively use oftentimes.

Since I'm just using this for basic storage and media, and I'yard somewhat limited in the number of drives I have available, I'm going with Parity. With three 8TB drives in Parity mode, I get about fourteen.5TB of usable space, which is enough for my electric current needs. Simply if yous need faster storage, you may want a mirror instead, since it'll exist quicker to write data (and quicker to rebuild if a drive fails).

Annotation that sure earlier versions of Windows offered the option for a ReFS storage space, but this was removed from consumer versions of Windows ten. If yous have Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, you can employ Microsoft's newer resilient file arrangement.

When you're ready, click Create Storage Space—that's all it takes. Your new volume should be immediately accessible, and you can showtime copying data to information technology.

How to Add a New Drive to Your Storage Space

For now, you're all done—you lot can apply your computer equally normal. If at that place comes a day where y'all run depression on infinite over again and desire to add even more storage to your pool, Storage Spaces makes it easy.

Manage storage spaces

Head back to the Manage Storage Spaces page and click the Change Settings push button. Then, next to your electric current puddle, click the Add together Drives push.

Select your bulldoze (once again, information technology volition be erased, then back it up beginning!) and make certain the Optimize Drive Usage box is checked—this will motility some of your data to the new drive so it's spread across all your drives optimally.

Select drives

Click the Add Drives push, and one time Windows is finished moving that data, y'all'll have fifty-fifty more space to work with.

At that place's a lot more than to Storage Spaces than what we've covered hither, then when you're set up to get more than avant-garde with it, be sure to search around to see the extra features you tin enable through PowerShell. For now, savour your much larger pool of drives!

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How To Set Up Multiple Hard Drives Windows 10,

Source: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-combine-multiple-hard-drives-with-windows-storage-spaces#:~:text=To%20create%20a%20storage%20space%20in%20Windows%2C%20open%20the%20Start,drives%20attached%20to%20your%20computer.

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