How to master Storage Spaces in Windows 8

November 01, 2012

Windows 8 includes a ton of great new features that are easy to overlook amidst the sturm und drang over the Start screen. Meet Storage Spaces, a new Windows utility that allows you to connect multiple data storage devices (internal and external) that rely on different interfaces (SATA hard drives, USB flash drives, and Serial Attached SCSI drives, for example) to your PC and treat them as a single giant storehouse dubbed your “storage pool.” You can divide that pool into spaces with names like ‘My Movie Space’ or ‘Jane’s Spreadsheets’ that function exactly like traditional formatted Windows directories. In fact, it isn’t entirely accurate to describe your motley crew of heterogeneous hard drives as a pool; the spaces in Storage Spaces are actually formatted with a unique file system that renders all incorporated hard drives inaccessible to Windows proper. Use Storage Spaces to transform your external drives into a redundant virtual storage drive that you can expand as needed. That’s because the spaces in Windows 8 Storage Spaces are designed to mirror the data stored in them to other drives in the pool, so you can safeguard your data against the threat of drive failure without having to pay for and maintain dedicated RAID drives. Though the Storage Spaces arrangement isn’t foolproof, it greatly increases the likelihood that—if one or more drives in your pool fail—a copy of your data will remain available (or be reconstructable) from one or more of the other drives in the pool. Storage Spaces gives you a handy way to manage large pools of data, especially ones that will gradually expand over time (such as family photo albums or movie collections). Building your first pool To create a new pool, first make sure that all of the storage devices you want to include are connected to your PC; then open your Windows 8 Control Panel by pressing your Windows key, typing control panel, and pressing Enter. Select the Storage Spaces option from the Control Panel, and select Create a new pool and storage space. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2012847/how-to-master-storage-spaces-in-windows-8.html