Boot Drive Included in Storage Spaces

Glenn Roe 1 Reputation point
2021-06-29T19:22:12.657+00:00

I have gone through layers of support and the community and no one has ever even heard of Storages Spaces.

I have one simple question, Can I create a Storage Spaces pool with just the boot drive and an empty drive, mirror it and boot from it successfully work.

Windows Server Storage
Windows Server Storage
Windows Server: A family of Microsoft server operating systems that support enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.Storage: The hardware and software system used to retain data for subsequent retrieval.
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  1. Yuhan Deng 3,691 Reputation points
    2021-06-30T02:57:35.007+00:00

    Hi,
    Based on my understanding,
    Generally, no - you can't boot from a software RAID volume because the BIOS/UEFI/etc don't know anything about it. Your OS bootloader file might get striped across multiple physical drives and even if the BIOS/UEFI/etc could find the beginning of it (say if it happened to start in the expected location), it would have no idea how to find the rest.

    One exception sometimes is software RAID-1 - Windows will let you set this up for your boot drive. If the first disk dies, you can have the system boot from the other. But again, since the BIOS/UEFI/etc aren't aware they can't take action automatically. If the first drive gets corrupted, the system may well just hang on boot and there would be no automatic failover to the remaining good drive.

    Thanks for your understanding.
    Best regards，
    Danny

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  2. Glenn Roe 1 Reputation point
    2021-06-30T03:30:45.33+00:00

    I am trying to set up a RAID 1 with boot drive included. Storage Spaces doesn't seem to refer to it as a RAID. It is just called a two way mirror.
    So can I use Storage Spaces (not RAID from the disk management) to set up a 2 way mirror and have it boot?
    Storage Spaces is set up from the windows search bar by typing "Storage Spaces".
    I spent hours with level 1 and level 2 MS support and it was obvious they had never heard of it.

  3. Glenn Roe 1 Reputation point
    2021-06-30T09:09:18.82+00:00

    i will do that but I find it odd for something that has been in use for years and no one knows the answer to a simple question.