Storage Spaces Optimization

Question

Hi,

Hoping someone can help me here. 

I'm running Windows 10 and I'm having issues re-building my Storage Space. I had two 3 TB drives in a 2-way mirror. At some point, the connection failed on one drive and took them both down. 

I have successfully added a third 3 TB drive to the pool and retired the broken drive. I'm trying to optimize/rebalance the pool now, but when I run Optimize-StoragePool, it runs for awhile, then I'm getting this error message: 

Optimize-StoragePool -FriendlyName "pool"

Optimize-StoragePool : Unspecified Error

Extended information:

Element not found.

Activity ID: {92028993-bd21-485a-87b2-5ed2d931456b}

At line:1 char:1

• Optimize-StoragePool -FriendlyName "pool"

    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (StorageWMI:ROOT/Microsoft/...SFT_StoragePool) [Optimize-StoragePool], CimException

    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : StorageWMI 2,Optimize-StoragePool

Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Greg,

My C: drive is unaffected and working fine. I'm looking for some guidance on how to break apart my Storage Space pool without somehow losing the data.

I have 3 drives, lets call them A, B, and C. Drive A is working fine, drive B is the damaged drive, and I just installed drive C. I'm trying to do two things:

1. Repair the Virtual Disk
2. Remove drive B from the Storage Pool

I'm sort of following the logic in these instructions: 

https://hodgkins.io/replace-failed-disk-in-storage-spaces-pool-with-powershell

http://www.systemcentercentral.com/fixing-a-degraded-virtual-disk-in-a-storage-pool-with-a-drive-configured-as-a-hot-spare/ 

I've been successful so far until I got to the repairing the volumes part. 

Any advice? Thanks. 

On a separate note, if the one drive failed, would that mean that it took down all the data on the working drive as well? Thanks

Answer 2

Hi Ahophing. I'm Greg, an installation specialist and 9 year Windows MVP, here to help you.

That's a RAID which I would not use because in countless RAID cases I've seen over ten years in forums almost every one which had a drive failed lost all of their data - even in a mirror intended to preserve it. So it doesn't even live up to the first letter of it's acroynym, because it's not redundant, it just fails and takes your data.

There are very few good reasons for having a RAID nowadays anyway with huge drivers, SSD speed and backup imaging that restores a drive in 20 minutes. So I would break the RAID, install WIndows to the fastest drive with the other one uninstalled, then add the other back for storage.

Save a System Image backup stored externally so if Windows ever becomes irreparable you can restore C in 20 minutes and be up and running: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/7363/macrium-re...

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and let us know how it goes. I will keep working with you until it's resolved.

______________________________________________

Standard Disclaimer: There are links to non-Microsoft websites. The pages appear to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the sites that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the sites before you decide to download and install it.