An observation and a bit of a rant: The topic for today is Storage Spaces

I love Windows. I really do. But there are some things that I just simply do not understand about Microsoft's implementation of new features. For example, they seem to have a hard time ever finishing what they start.

One example would be dark mode. It has been several years, and they STILL have not fully transitioned everything.

But my rant today involves Storage Spaces in particular because it is such a good example of this.

First, let's note that anything involving the storage of your data, especially the protection of your data by creating a mirror, parity, double-parity, etc. storage space should be considered ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL because getting this wrong can cause data loss.

With that said, I thought that I would take a new look at Storage Spaces in Windows 11 Pro 23H2 to see what has changed in the past couple of years since I last played with it. To start, I took a look at the new GUI implementation for Storage Spaces in the settings app. Note that you can now setup Storage Spaces in either the Settings app or in Control Panel.

So, I select a bunch of disks to create a storage space. These are brand new, unformatted disks. I try to create a new storage pool using the new app in Settings. I get some bizarre error indicating that there is not enough storage space. What? These are blank disks. So, I move to the Control Panel app and perform the same operation and it works with no problem.

Now that I have a storage pool, I decide that I want to actually create a storage space within that pool of disks. Interestingly, the Control Panel app has no option to create a double-parity storage space, but the app in Settings does. Also, in the past it used to be that in order to create a double-parity storage space, you had to have a minimum of 7 disks, but now you can do this using only 5 disks, although if I recall correctly double-parity may have only been available on server versions of Windows. However, if you go to Windows help on this topic, specifically for Windows 11, the help topics still tell you that you need a minimum of 7 disks.

I also wanted to test the effects of removing a disk from the pool. The new app in Windows settings would not allow me to do this, but the Control Panel app did allow it.

So, the bottom line is that some things work in both the settings app, some in Control Panel, some in both. Even the online help has blatantly wrong information.

Remember - if you are using this, you are trying to organize and PROTECT your data. But who in their right mind is going to use this when even the most basic of operations and information available from Microsoft are so deeply flawed?

Note that I tried all of these tasks on 3 different machines just to make sure I was not encountering a one-off oddity. The behavior was the same on all of these systems. So at least we have consistent mediocrity .

It is this half-baked approach that really annoys me in Windows at time. Microsoft seems to love starting things and never finishing them, releasing half-baked features, only to often abandon then entirely at a later time. Storage spaces is only one example. The transition from Control Panel to the new settings app has been ongoing for years and we are still nowhere near any level of consistency. How about another major feature - an actual Windows filesystem (REFS). How many years will it take to make any forward progress on this?

- End Rant -

Microsoft's Modus Operandi (method of operation)...

1. Come up with a new idea.
2. Start writing the code to make it happen.
3. MS realizes new code is hard and expensive.
4. Project gets moved to back burner.
5. Two or three years pass...
6. Unfinished project gets added to the deprecation list.

1. Come up with a new idea.
2. Start writing the code to make it happen.
3. MS realizes new code is hard and expensive.
4. Project gets moved to back burner.
5. Two or three years pass...
6. Unfinished project gets added to the deprecation list.


Etc., etc., etc...

I agree @Ghot they never get around to actually finishing any feature, new or old.

@hsehestedt
Personally, I would not even consider creating a RAID array (Storage Pool) in Windows. There are too many gotchas when things don't go to plan when using Windows to manage things, their solution is half baked, as you rightly pointed out.

A dedicated NAS is a much better solution IMHO, although it can be an expensive route to take.

To me, Storage Spaces has only been a UI way of setting up a software RAID via dynamic volume instead of a true hardware RAID. This renamed dynamic volume RAID is just too unstable for my tastes. One glitch, and bye bye data.

I agree. Using either an external drive enclosure or NAS setup with hardware RAID is much safer for backups.

I agree with everyone's comments. I was merely looking into it to educate myself on what may have changed. I'm actually using a third-party utility called "DrivePool" by StableBit. Absolutely brilliant product. It creates storage pools but all data is left in 100% native NTFS filesystem format. So, even if something went horribly wrong, the data on each individual drive can still be read in any standard Windows machine with no special RAID software or hardware needed at all.

Ghot said:

Microsoft's Modus Operandi (method of operation)...

1. Come up with a new idea.
2. Start writing the code to make it happen.
3. MS realizes new code is hard and expensive.
4. Project gets moved to back burner.
5. Two or three years pass...
6. Unfinished project gets added to the deprecation list.

1. Come up with a new idea.
2. Start writing the code to make it happen.
3. MS realizes new code is hard and expensive.
4. Project gets moved to back burner.
5. Two or three years pass...
6. Unfinished project gets added to the deprecation list.


Etc., etc., etc...

Click to expand...

Then there's their plan to move everything from Control Panel. I wonder how many years or should I say decades is it going to take.

Winuser said:

Then there's their plan to move everything from Control Panel. I wonder how many years or should I say decades is it going to take.

Click to expand...

They should probably just create a new Windows, from scratch. Like when they switched to Windows NT back in the day.
There's enough broken stuff floating around in the bowels of Windows as it is.

@Ghot
I agree 100%. They are still building on the Win95 base. At the very least they should go back to that base and start over, making the proper updates from the get go instead of patching patches over patches over patches.

I am hoping that is what they are doing with Win12, but that is likely to be subscription based, so the code base may be very different.

trumpy81 said:

@Ghot
I agree 100%. They are still building on the Win95 base. At the very least they should go back to that base and start over, making the proper updates from the get go instead of patching patches over patches over patches.

I am hoping that is what they are doing with Win12, but that is likely to be subscription based, so the code base may be very different.

Click to expand...

There are speculations that the Insider Canary build is the start of what is going to be the next Windows release. I don't know how true it is.

It would not surprise me if Microsoft simply continue building on what they have now, but it sure would be nice if they started over and did things the right way from the start, instead of patching over everything.

It must be hell working as a programmer for Microsoft, trying to change things that someone else programmed decade/s ago and left no documentation for.

I am sure they are capable people, but I would not wish that on anyone ... lol

The night light is one example. It never did work right. However I set it I always have to manually turn it on. I don't know anything about writing code but I think this would be a simple program to get right.