Is anyone using Storage Spaces on 23H2? I have some questions.

I have long been distrusting of Storage Spaces on Windows client PCs, but I may be coming around. I did some testing and so far, so good, but I do have a few questions for any who may have actually used it.

First, let me make a few observations...

In the past, if I recall correctly, storage spaces used to want 7 drives minimum (!) to create a parity set. Now, it will allow creation of a parity set with only 3 drives and dual parity with 5 disks.

There seems to be some disconnect between the legacy Storage Spaces app in Control Panel and the new controls in Settings >System > Storage > Storage Spaces. For example, only the app in Settings allows you to create dual parity.

I was testing on a VM with a pile of VHDs and create a dual parity set. I then purposely killed two VHDs to see what would happen. The legacy app showed the two failed drives. The settings app indicated that there was a problem but listed each individual drive as if there was no issue with any of them. If I would click on one of the failed drives, the settings app would close ("gracefully" crash).

I do like the fact that the settings app gives you some more drive detail such as physical drive info.

What I found to be a little awkward was that some operations I could only do in the settings app, while others required the legacy Storage Spaces app. It seemed a little odd bouncing around between them.

So, here are my questions:

1) The crash I see in the settings app and lack of info on failed disks - does anyone know if that is simply because these are VHDs? Anyone have experience with this?

2) Are any of you brave souls running this in real life? If so, any issues that you are aware of, or does it seem reliable?

For the first time ever I'm actually considering using this, but as a backup only for now. I'll be using 8TB drives and I want to get a feel for how long a rebuild is, etc.

Any thoughts from people who have actually used this?

hsehestedt said:

2) Are any of you brave souls running this in real life? If so, any issues that you are aware of, or does it seem reliable?

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No, i am not using it. I've played with it a few times in the past with VM's and such and simply haven't been able to get past the feeling that this is all gonna end up in tears at some point.

I'm fortunate in that I don't have a lot of data, thus I don't need to build large arrays to house it. I can just use a few standalone drives and keep it simple.

I'm at the point where I may experiment with it, but will have all data stored there backed up elsewhere. I have about 10 spare 8TB drives so I figure that could make for some good testing.

I have the feeling that "Storage Spaces" is one of those... soon to be deprecated features.
That's just a guess, ofc.

Ghot said:

Amazon.com

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I have the feeling that "Storage Spaces" is one of those... soon to be deprecated features.
That's just a guess, ofc.

Click to expand...

Educated guess. Windows wants you to use One Drive and all the billion dollar babies want you to use their storage instead. Personally, I prefer to keep all my data physically, in my own possession. To each their own. BTW Nice picture. There was a time I probably would have benefited from owning a unit like that.

Scannerman said:

Educated guess. Windows wants you to use One Drive and all the billion dollar babies want you to use their storage instead. Personally, I prefer to keep all my data physically, in my own possession. To each their own. BTW Nice picture. There was a time I probably would have benefited from owning a unit like that.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I made a pic for this, the other day.

*tsk* *tsk* You decentralist, you!