How to Create and Use the Storage Spaces Feature on Windows 11

Key Takeaways

• Storage Spaces is a built-in feature of the Windows operating system, allowing you to create a cluster of hard drives and a large storage pool.
• When you use the Storage Spaces feature, the virtual drives created work like standard hard drives would.

What Are Storage Spaces in Windows 11 and Why Should You Create One

Storage Spaces lets you create an array or group of two or more physical hard drives to create a larger virtual drive or Storage Pool that you can use to store and protect your data.

Virtual drives created with Storage Spaces may appear to function like standard hard drives, but the main reason you should create Storage Spaces on your Windows 11 PC is its resilience and scalability.

• Resiliency refers to the ability of Storage Space to create one or more copies of data spread across multiple drives, helping protect your valuable data from drive failure.
• Scalability refers to the ability of a Storage Space to expand its combined storage space by adding new drives. This essentially allows you to expand the storage space of a virtual drive, which is difficult with physical disks.

How to Create a Storage Space on Windows 11

Creating a Storage Space might sound like a complicated process, but it’s easy on Windows 11. Unlike earlier versions of Windows, which relied on the Control Panel, Windows 11 makes creating Storage Spaces a much simpler task, thanks to its new and improved Settings app.

Here’s how you can easily create a Storage Space using the Settings app on your Windows 11 PC:

Step 1: Press the Windows + I keys to access the Settings app. In the right pane, click on System > Storage on the left.

Step 2: From the Storage screen, click on the Advanced storage settings drop-down.

Step 3: From the Advanced storage settings drop-down, click on Storage Spaces.

Step 4: Next, click on Add.

Step 5: Type a name for the storage pool by clicking on the text box under Name. Then, select the disks which you want to add to the pool.

Step 6: After assigning a name to the storage pool and selecting the relevant disks, click Create.

Windows will then create a Storage pool by merging multiple disks together. It will also ask you to create a Storage Space from it to enable the data protection mechanism.

Step 7: Name the storage space by clicking on the text box under Name. Then, type a number to determine the size of the Storage Space you will be creating.

Step 8: Select the type of resiliency or data protection method by clicking the Two-way mirror drop-down. Here’s what each option does:

• Simple allows you to merge two drives without any data protection.
• Two-way mirror creates a single mirrored copy of the data and allows you to merge two drives with data protection for up to a single drive failure.
• Three-way mirror creates two mirrored copies of the data and allows you to merge five drives with data protection for up to two drive failures.
• Parity allows storing files on three drives along with parity information. Windows can use the parity information to rebuild the data in case of a single drive failure.
• Dual-parity allows storing files on seven drives with parity information. Windows can use the parity information to rebuild the data in case of dual drive failure.

Then, click on Create to save the changes and create a new Storage Space.

Step 9: Type a name for the New volume by clicking on the text box under Label. Then, click the Drive Letter drop-down to assign a new Drive Letter to the New volume.

Step 10: Click on the File System drop-down to select a file system for the New volume. Then, click on Format.

• Select NTFS (New Technology File System) if you use the Storage Space to store data with standard data protection against data corruption.
• Select ReFS (Resilient File System) to use the Storage space to store a large amount of data with improved data protection against data corruption.

After you click Format, a new disk partition with the drive letter D should appear in the File Explorer. Meanwhile, if a drive fails or you want to expand the storage space by adding a new hard drive, you can easily click the Physical disks drop-down and click the Add disks to storage pool button.

FAQs

How Do I Remove a Storage Pool?

Open the PowerShell with admin rights, type this command Remove-StoragePool -FriendlyName ‘Storage pool 1’, replacing Storage pool 1 with the name of the actual pool.

What Happens if I Accidentally Create a Second Storage Pool or Have an Unknown Read-Only Pool?

It is tricky to recover data from a corrupted or unwanted Storage Pool. Generally, you may update the OS to see if there will be any changes or consult a data recovery professional if the pool contains important information.