[Escalate by MS Answers Community] What is the impact of Storage Spaces on hard drive speeds?

Question

[Escalate by MS Answers Community]

• ISSUE

What is the impact of Storage Spaces on hard drive speeds?

I would like to ask what impact Storage Spaces has on hard drive speeds? Can this feature improve sequential read/write speed, or can it improve random read/write speed?

At work, I often access a lot of files that take up very little space. With Storage Spaces on, the read speed does not improve. I am using Simple spaces.

How can I maximize the random read/write speed of my hard drive?

• PRODUCT

Windows 10 > Storage Spaces > Simple spaces

• URL

https://answers.microsoft.com/thread/97813595-2ba7-44e6-a430-573f2b108996

Would you mind providing me with as comprehensive an answer as possible in one go?

Thank you so much!

---

Dear Microsoft Q&A Community,

I'm Lingg, a Support Specialist at MS Answers Community. The Answers Community only handles fundamental issues. We typically ask customers to consult the Microsoft Q&A Community for high-level technical questions.

I am working on my own on ways to improve Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). For Feature Inquiry type questions (e.g., Does product A support feature B?), I will initiate the inquiry directly on behalf of the customer. I will translate your response and forward it to the customer.

Your copyright is always strictly protected. I will indicate your name and title and provide the client with a link to this topic. All of the above are my personal actions. I voluntarily perform work above and beyond the call of duty to achieve high-quality customer service.

Thank you so much!

Best regards,

Lingg Gao
Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 1

Hi,

Please know storage Space is a Software RAID implantation by Microsoft. It will never act faster than an Hardware RAID and will always be slower than no RAID at all, BUT, the goal of storage space is more for data resilience in case of hardware fault. To loose nothing if a disk fail.

I will copy a good answer from there; Should we use Storage Spaces or RAID?;

Storage Spaces Pros:

No hardware RAID required (less cost).
Non-parity redundancy types (Simple and Mirror with different column combinations) work good from both performance and stability standpoint.
Automated Storage Tiering. This can be a very useful feature for small deployments if configured properly.

Storage Spaces Cons:

Miserable performance if parity redundancy is used. Any mid-range hardware RAID controller will most certainly outperform Storage Spaces in this scenario.
Advanced options (changing default number of columns, tiering, space extend, WBC size change) are not usually available in GUI, and Google + Powershell are your best friends in this case.
All storage-related operations are offloaded to CPU (since RAID controller is absent) which may cause troubles during heavy workload. Always keep this in mind and estimate CPU resources accordingly when building a high-performance storage server powered by Storage Spaces.

If I were you - I'd stick with the HW RAID controller (especially, if you already have one).