System Optimize Storage Pool of Storage Spaces in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to optimize a storage pool to balance allocations across physical storage in the pool in Windows 11

Storage Spaces helps protect your data from drive failures and extend storage over time as you add drives to your PC. You can use Storage Spaces to group two or more drives together in a storage pool and then use capacity from that pool to create virtual drives called storage spaces. These storage spaces typically store two copies of your data so if one of your drives fails, you still have an intact copy of your data. If you run low on capacity, just add more drives to the storage pool.

When you delete a space or add new drives to an existing pool, it's a good idea to optimize drive usage for the pool. This will move some of your data to the newly added drive to make the best use of the pool's capacity. It'll happen by default when you add a new drive to an upgraded pool in Windows you'll see a check box for Optimize disk usage by spreading existing data across all disks in the pool selected when you add the drive. However, if you cleared that check box or added drives before upgrading a pool, you'll need to manually optimize drive usage.

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You must be signed in as an administrator to optimize a storage pool.

Optimizing a storage pool may take some time to finish depending on the size of the pool and the amount of data on it. Computer performance may be affected during optimization.

1 Open Settings (Win+I).

2 Click/tap on System on the left side, and click/tap on Storage on the right side. (see screenshot below)



3 Click/tap on Advanced storage settings to expand it open, and click/tap on Storage Spaces. (see screenshot below)


4 Click/tap on the Storage Pool name (ex: "Storage pool") you want to optimize. (see screenshot below)


5 Click/tap on the Optimize button at the top. (see screenshot below)


6 When optimizing has finished, you can close Settings if you like. (see screenshot below)






1 Open Windows Terminal (Admin), and select Windows PowerShell.

2 Copy and paste the command below into Windows Terminal (Admin), and press Enter to see a list of all storage pools. (see screenshot below step 3)


3 Make note of the current FriendlyName (ex: "Storage pool") of the Storage Pool you want to optimize. You will need to know this name in step 4 below. (see screenshot below)

Ignore the Primordial FriendlyName. It's not an actual Storage Pool.

4 Type the command below into Windows Terminal (Admin), and press Enter. (see screenshot below)

Substitute Name in the command above with the actual name (ex: "Storage pool") of the Storage Pool from step 3 above you want to remove (delete).

For example: Optimize-StoragePool -FriendlyName "Storage pool"

5 When optimizing has finished, you can close Windows Terminal (Admin). (see screenshot below)



That's it,
Shawn Brink